UC-NRLF 


B   M   51=1   357 


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LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT    OF 


C/tfSS 


From  the  Brady  photograph  in  the  group  of  portraits  of  members 
of  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress,  on  page  480 


The 

Life  and  Speeches 


OF 


Thomas  Williams 

Orator,    Statesman    and    Jurist 

1806-1872 
A  Founder  of  the  Whig  and  Republican  Parties 

By 

BURTON   ALVA   KONKLE 


Author  of 

"The  Life  and  Times  of  Thomas  Smith,  1743-1800" 

Formerly   associated   with    the    Historical   Work   of  the    Pennsylvania 

Bar  Association,  and  Member  of  the  Pennsylvania  Historical 

Society  and  American  Historical  Association 


With  an  Introduction  by 

HON.  PHILANDER   CHASE  KNOX,  LL.  D. 

United  States  Senator  from  Pennsylvania 


VOLUME  II 


CAMPION      &      COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA 

1905 


NOV   2 


Copyrighted,   1905 
BURTON  ALVA  KONKLE 


Contents 


CHAPTER  XIV.  His  Speech  on  the  Negro  in  Politics  and  His 
Election  as  Union  Member  of  the  State 
House  of  Representatives.  1860 394 

CHAPTER  XV.  At  Harrisburg.  His  Notable  Speech  on  the 
Maintenance  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union  and  the  Climax  in  His  Fight 
Against  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad.  He 
Is  One  of  the  Escorts  of  Lincoln's  Family 
to  Washington  and  Attended  the  Inau 
guration.  1861 433 

CHAPTER  XVI.  His  Election  to  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress. 
"The  Sumner  of  the  Lower  House."  His 
Notable  Eulogy  on  President  Lincoln. 
1862  478 

CHAPTER  XVII.  The  Thirty-ninth  Congress.  His  Brilliant 
Speech  on  "Reconstruction."  His  Ten- 
ure-of-Office  Bill  Determines  Line  of 
Attack  on  President  Johnson.  1865 553 

CHAPTER  XVIII.  The  Fortieth  Congress.  A  Leader  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee.  He  Writes  the 
Impeachment  Report  Against  President 
Johnson  and  Makes  the  Great  Final 
Argument  as  one  of  the  Board  of  Man 
agers.  1867 648 

CHAPTER     XIX.     Closing    Years.      1869-72 731 


Illustrations 


XXXIX.  Frontispiece  of  Volume  Two,  Mr.  Williams 
While  in  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress.  From 
the  Brady  photograph  in  the  group  of  por 
traits  of  that  Congress  on  page  480. 

XL.     The  Second  Pittsburgh  Court  House 430 

XLI.     Map   Showing  the   Presidential   Vote  of   Penn 
sylvania  in  1860,  by  Counties 432 

XLII.     The  Capitol  at  Harrisburg  in  1861.     From  the 

first  photograph  of  it,  namely,  that  by  Lemer        434 

XLIII.     President-elect  Lincoln.     From  a  contemporary 

photograph  by   Brady    458 

XLIV.     Inaugural  Ball  Program  of  1861   460 

XLV.     Mrs.    Thomas    Williams.     From   a   painting  by 

Lambdin    about    1854..' 464 

XLVI.  The  National  Capitol  After  Completion  of  the 
Wings  and  Dome.  From  a  contemporary 
engraving  by  Sartain 478 

XLVII.  Members  of  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress  Who 
Voted  for  the  Amendment  to  the  Constitu 
tion  Abolishing  Slavery,  with  Key  Diagram. 
From  a  group  of  photographs  by  Brady 480 

XLVIII.     President  Abraham  Lincoln.   From  a  photograph 

by   Brady    524 

XLIX.     President  Andrew  Johnson.    From  a  photograph 

by   Brady    554 

L.  View  of  the  National  House  of  Representatives 
in  1866.  From  a  Bohn  lithograph  of  the 
same  date  622 

LI.  "The  Situation,"  a  cartoon  in  Harper's  Weekly 
in  1868,  at  the  time  impeachment  was  decided 
upon 670 


LI  I.     The   Managers    of    Impeachment   of    President 

Johnson.     From  a  photograph  by  Brady 672 

LIII.     The  Managers  of  Impeachment.     From  a  cut  in 

Harper's   Weekly    674 

LIV.  The  House  in  Procession  to  the  Senate  as  a 
Court  of  Impeachment.  From  a  cut  in  Har 
per's  Weekly  676 

LV.     Card   of  Admission   to   the   Impeachment  Trial. 

From    card    No.    831 678 

LVI.     The  Senate  as  a  Court  of  Impeachment.     From 

a  view  in  Harper's  Weekly 680 

LVII.     William  M.  Evarts,  Chief  Counsel  for  the  Presi 
dent.     From  a  photograph  by  Brady     682 

LVIII.  Benjamin  Franklin  Wade,  Who  Would  Have 
Succeeded  Andrew  Johnson  Had  the  Latter 
Been  Removed.  From  a  photograph  by  Brady  730 

LIX.     Resolutions  of  the  Pittsburgh  Bar  on  the  Death 

of  Mr.   Williams    734 

LX.  A  Bust  of  Mr.  Williams,  by  Clarke  Mills. 
From  the  original  in  the  Pennsylvania  His 
torical  Society  738 


CHAPTER    XIV 

His    SPEECH    ON   THE    NEGRO     IN    POLITICS    AND    His 

ELECTION    AS    UNION    MEMBER   OF   THE   STATE 

HOUSE    OF   REPRESENTATIVES 

1860 

In  the  campaign  which  followed  the  nomination  of 
Lincoln  and  Hamlin  in  June,  1860,  at  Chicago,  Mr. 
Williams  took  a  leading  part  for  many  reasons.  It  is 
not  the  purpose  here  to  enter  into  the  details  of  this  teem 
ing  period,  either  in  national  life  or  in  Mr.  Williams' 
personal  life.  Let  it  suffice  to  say  that  he  became 
spokesman  for  two  movements,  in  Pittsburgh  and  the 
State,  which  may  be  described  as  follows:  he  was  made 
the  candidate  of  the  people  to  fight  the  proposed  repeal 
of  the  tonnage  tax,  which  had  been  imposed  on  the  Penn 
sylvania  Railroad  and  was  still  unpaid,  and  was  also 
selected  as  the  Union  or  Republican  or  People's  candi 
date  to  go  to  the  Lower  House  of  the  Legislature,  for,  it 
may  be  explained,  recent  events  and  the  policy  of  the 
national  executive  committee  of  the  Republican  party 
caused  a  very  effective  union  of  all  the  elements  of  oppo 
sition  under  the  term  the  Union  or  People's  ticket. 
Among  the  numerous  speeches  and  addresses  he  made 
during  the  campaign  probably  the  most  notable  was  that 
delivered  at  Lafayette  Hall,  in  Pittsburgh,  on  the  even 
ing  of  September  29th,  on  "The  Negro  in  American  Poli 
tics,"  just  before  the  State  election.1  This  was  at  once 
published  and  widely  used,  and  it  still  carries  the  very 
breath  and  heart-beats  of  that  great  contest.  Let  it  tell 
its  own  story : 

FELLOW  CITIZENS: — I  trust  it  will  not  be  supposed  that  my 
appearance  here  to-night  has  anything  to  do  with  the  accidental 

1  Copy  among  the  Williams  papers. 

395 


::  ("        THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

fact  that  I  am  myself  a  candidate  for  an  office  which  I  have  not 
sought — which  I  do  not  want — which  involves  great  labor,  and 
a  responsibility  which  you  have  never  before  cast  upon  the 
shoulders  of  a  representative — which  is  moreover  without  reward 
— and  which  it  will  cost  me  more  than  the  wages  of  a  Congress 
man  to  accept.  If  there  is  any  body  here  who  feels  any  difficulty  in 
regard  to  myself,  all  I  have  to  say  to  him  is,  that  he  can  render 
me  no  greater  personal  service  than  by  voting  against  me.  If  I 
had  desired  to  advance  my  own  cause,  I  should  rather  have 
avoided,  than  sought  an  occasion  like  the  present.  Your  com 
mittee  of  arrangements  was  pleased  to  request  me  to  address 
the  great  Convention  which  assembled  on  the  Allegheny  Com 
mon  on  Thursday  last.  The  condition  of  my  voice,  as  indicated 
by  one  or  two  previous  experiments,  compelled  me  to  decline  the 
invitation.  Feeling,  however,  that  it  was  my  duty  as  a  citizen 
to  contribute  my  quota  of  service,  as  heretofore,  to  a  cause 
which  has  interested  me  so  greatly,  and  very  naturally  desirous, 
as  I  had  labored  in  the  preparation,  to  have  some  share  in  the 
triumph,  I  signified  my  willingness  to  address  the  people,  at  some 
length,  in  such  a  place  as  I  could  make  myself  heard  without 
injury,  and  I  am  accordingly  before  you  this  evening  for  that 
purpose. 

And  yet  I  may  be  allowed  to  say,  that  on  no  past  occasion 
have  I  felt  the  weight  of  a  temporary  infirmity  more  strongly, 
than  in  view  of  the  stirring  exhibition  which  I  witnessed  on 
Thursday  last.  As  I  cast  my  eye  over  the  mustering  squadrons 
of  that  bannered  host,  my  heart  beat  exultingly  at  the  evidence 
it  furnished  of  the  thorough  awakening  of  the  North.  I  thought 
I  saw  in  it  the  omen,  as  well  as  the  instrument  of  a  great  deliv 
erance — and  the  exclamation  rose  involuntarily  to  my  lips, 
"Thank  God!  there  is  a  North!"  Yes!  the  granite  hills  of 
Maine  have  just  proclaimed  it  in  the  roll  of  twice  ten  thousand 
thunders,  and  the  hills  and  valleys  of  Pennsylvania  are  about  to 
echo  back  with  a  redoubled  peal,  the  joyful  shout — "There  is  a 
North."  The  years  of  our  captivity  are  numbered.  Our  long 
and  weary  pilgrimage  is  about  to  terminate.  Mount  Pisgah  is 
before  us.  In  ten  days  more  we  scale  its  summit,  and  the  prom 
ised  land,  which  has  so  long  fled  before  us,  is  at  our  feet. 

Well,  I  knew  that  this  would  come  at  the  appointed  time. 
When  I  abandoned  the  field  of  politics,  as  I  did,  after  the  disas 
trous  campaign  of  1844,  it  was  with  the  feeling  that  it  was  vain  to 
struggle  against  the  prestige  of  the  successful  party,  and  that 
the  surest  road  to  relief,  although  perhaps  a  very  long  and  pain 
ful  one,  was  through  the  excesses  of  unbridled  power,  and  the 
full  development  and  exposure  of  the  principle  which  was  so 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS  IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      397 

obviously  animating  the  victors.  For  this  result  I  waited  with 
the  faith  and  patience  of  the  aged  Simeon.  It  came  at  last  in 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  culminated  in  the 
mortal  struggle,  which,  commencing  on  the  plains  of  Kansas, 
was  transferred  to  the  Federal  Capitol,  and  there  shook  the 
Representative  Hall  of  the  people  with  treason,  and  dyed  the 
floor  of  the  Senate  chamber  with  blood.  The  hour  had  then 
struck.  The  field  of  politics  was  flooded  with  a  new  light 
from  the  blazing  dwelling  of  the  inhabitant  of  the  prairies. 
The  veil  had  dropped  from  the  faces  of  the  combatants.  The 
two  great  antagonistic  interests  which  had  been  so  long 
wrestling  for  empire  under  arbitrary  names,  had  now  come 
face  to  face,  with  visors  up,  in  mortal  embrace.  The  problem 
of  American  politics  was  now  solved.  The  issue  was  at  last 
directly  made,  and  it  brought  along  with  it  the  inducement  to 
renewed  exertion,  in  the  assurance  which  it  furnished  of  a  great 
deliverance.  The  time  had  now  come  to  strike  once  more  for 
freedom. 

We  failed,  it  is  true,  in  the  first  of  our  struggles,  because 
we  were  a  raw  militia,  without  organization,  without  discipline, 
without  the  knowledge  of  our  strength,  and  under  the  influence 
of  an  unmanly  terror,  inspired  amongst  the  timid  by  the  bloody 
menaces  of  our  foes.  It  was  such  a  failure,  however,  as  taught 
them  to  respect  our  strength  and  courage,  and  taught  us  con 
fidence  in  our  ability  to  achieve  our  deliverance  whenever  we 
chose  to  will  it.  We  are  now  about  to  strike  again,  with  the 
assurance  that  the  victory  will  be  ours;  and  I  propose  to  stim 
ulate  your  zeal  by  pointing  out  the  issues,  as  I  understand 
them,  and  awakening  you  to  a  proper  sense  of  the  importance 
of  the  struggle  which  is  before  you. 

The  territorial  question,  then,  which  stands  out  in  such  bold 
relief,  which  has  divided  the  Democratic  party  itself,  and 
around  which  no  less  than  three  embattled  hosts  are  now  con 
tending,  is  in  itself  but  the  efflorescence — the  out-cropping  of  a 
disease  which  has  been  lurking  and  fermenting  in  the  bowels 
of  the  state,  and  was  bound  to  find  its  way  to  the  surface  in 
some  violent  eruption  like  this.  That  disease  is  human  slavery 
— the  property  of  man  in  man — of  one  man  in  the  labor,  the 
bones,  the  sinews,  and  the  muscles  of  another.  Our  ancestors 
found  it  here.  They  saw  and  knew  that  its  existence  was  at 
war  with  the  very  fundamental  principles  of  the  Government 
which  they  were  constructing,  that  slavery  was  no  question  of 
complexion,  and  that  the  same  logic  which  made  a  slave  of  the 
black  man,  would  be  equally  fatal  to  the  freedom  of  the  white. 
They  wrere,  however,  practical  men,  and  while  they  were  studi- 


398  THOMAS     WILLIAMS 

cms  to  avoid  the  monstrous  inconsistency  of  engraving  the  term 
"slave"  upon  the  tables  of  their  fundamental  law,  they  endeav 
ored  to  deal  with  the  question  in  such  a  manner  as  would  secure 
the  conventional  rights  of  the  master  during  the  brief  period 
for  which  this  anomaly  was  expected  to  endure.  There  was  not 
one,  I  think,  of  all  that  illustrious  band  of  patriots  and  sages 
that  framed  the  Constitution  who  looked  forward  to  its  per 
petuation,  or  regarded  it  otherwise  than  as  a  great  and 
unmitigated  evil — a  standing  reproach  to  our  institutions — 
and  a  lasting  impeachment  of  the  sincerity  of  the  men  who 
framed  them.  That  it  should  ever  come  to  be  regarded  as  a 
national  blessing — as  a  great  instrument  of  civilization — or  as 
a  missionary  agent  in  the  Christianization  of  a  heathen  people, 
was  the  buried  thought  of  a  superstitious  age,  with  the  mould 
of  more  than  three  hundred  years  upon  it,  which  was  reserved 
for  resurrection  at  the  progressive  era  that  has  just  dawned 
upon  ourselves.  They  supposed,  however,  that  they  could  recon 
cile  the  two  great  antagonistic  conditions  of  humanity,  and  so 
blend  them  together  as  to  avoid  a  conflict.  They  were  mistaken. 
The  task  was  one  which  exceeded  their  powers.  The  great  law 
of  liberty  was  not  to  be  thus  compromised  with  impunity.  There 
was  an  avenging  Nemesis  on  the  trail  of  this  unnatural  union. 
The  result  has  shown  that  William  Pinckney  was  right,  when 
he  lifted  up  his  voice,  half  a  century  ago,  in  the  Legislature  of 
Maryland,  in  bitter  reprobation  of  the  unholy  alliance,  and 
uttered  those  memorable  words  which  are  still  so  familiar  to  the 
ear  of  boyhood — "The  rose  and  the  bramble  may  grow  in  mutual 
contact,  but  liberty  and  slavery  delight  in  separation." 

I  do  not  say  that  the  institution  of  slavery  is  not  consistent 
with  the  love  of  liberty,  and  with  a  high  development  of  that 
lofty  and  chivalrous  spirit,  which  is  the  best  guarantee  for  the 
independence  of  nations.  The  lessons  of  history  teach  us,  on 
the  contrary,  that  the  proudest  and  most  jealous  of  governments 
were  precisely  those,  where  the  people  were  divided  into  the  two 
great  classes  of  masters  and  slaves.  Those  governments,  how 
ever,  though  republican  in  name,  were  but  oligarchies  in  effect, 
with  obvious  and  irresistible  tendencies  in  the  direction  of  the 
establishments  which  broke  up  the  power  of  the  monarchies  of 
mediaeval  Europe,  and  depopulated  their  territories,  and  impov 
erished  their  soil,  by  the  forced  labor  of  serfdom  or  villenage. 
And  such,  I  undertake  to  say,  are  precisely  the  fruits  of  this 
patriarchal  institution  in  all  those  parts  of  our  confederacy 
where  it  prevails.  It  has  produced  a  race  of  men  of  great 
wealth,  of  high  culture,  of  indomitable  pride,  and  of  undoubted 
courage,  who  are  the  aristocracy  of  the  State.  It  has  produced 


A   NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IX  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      399 

another,  however,  which  is  only  fitted  for  a  condition  of  thral 
dom;  and  that  is  not  a  black  race,  but  a  white  one.  Where 
labor  is  done  by  slaves,  it  is  not  considered  honorable  for  free 
men — just  as  trade  itself  involved  a  forfeiture  of  rank  among 
the  French  noblesse  two  hundred  years  ago — and,  as  a  conse 
quence,  the  distinction  between  the  poorer  classes  and  the  slave 
himself,  is  one  of  color  only,  which  is  slowly  and  impercepti 
bly  fading  away  under  that  process  of  amalgamation,  which  is 
falsely  charged  on  us,  and  true  only  as  to  our  accusers.  If 
there  be  any  difference,  it  is  in  favor  of  the  black  man.  There 
is  no  portion  of  our  slaveholding  communities,  which  is  so  ready 
to  lynch  a  Yankee  schoolmaster,  as  the  very  "poor  trash,"  whom 
the  negroes  themselves  despise. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Although  a  domestic  and  peculiar  insti 
tution,  as  they  are  wont  to  call  it,  until  it  aimed  to  become  an 
extra-territorial  and  general  one,  its  effects  have  not  been  con 
fined  to  the  communities  in  which  it  exists.  While  we  are 
denied  the  privilege  of  meddling  with  it,  it  has  never  ceased  to  act 
upon  ourselves.  The  very  sense  of  antagonism  to  liberty  which 
it  has  produced,  has  been  ever  present  in  the  mind  of  the  slave 
owner,  from  the  foundation  of  this  Government.  A  commu 
nity  of  interest  has  held  them  together  upon  all  occasions,  and 
operated  as  a  flux  to  fuse  down  the  most  discordant  elements 
into  the  most  perfect  harmony.  If  we,  of  the  Free  States,  have 
sometimes  forgotten  that  there  was  a  common  bond  to  unite  us, 
because  we  have  no  institution  that  has  the  advantage  of  being 
peculiar,  it  has  not  been  so  with  them.  Democrat,  and  Whig,  and 
American,  they  have  been  ever  one  as  against  us.  Scarcely  a 
Free  State  has  been  allowed  to  come  into  this  Union,  without  a 
black  duenna  at  her  side — without  being  covered  by  the  dark 
shadow  of  another,  which  recognized  a  property  in  slaves.  No 
matter  how  rapidly  we  might  grow  under  the  benign  influences  of 
free  institutions,  it  has  always  been  the  policy  of  the  slave  owner 
to  countercheck  our  weight  in  the  Senate,  and  to  neutralize  our 
enormous,  but  healthful  development,  by  the  sort  of  Polish  veto, 
which  enabled  him  to  tie  the  hands  of  the  majority,  and  deprive 
it  of  all  powers  of  legislation.  The  consequence  has  been,  that 
they  have  controlled  the  policy  of  the  Government  throughout, 
and  kept  it  oscillating  and  fluctuating  from  one  system  to  another, 
just  as  the  interests  of  slavery  were  supposed  to  lean,  whether 
for  or  against  a  tariff — for  or  against  internal  improvements — or 
for  or  against  a  bank — but  always  true  to  this  one  magnetic  pole. 
By  the  same  power  of  combination,  they  have  seized  upon  all 
the  important  places  in  the  Government,  and  made  the  question 
"is  he  in  favor  of  slavery?"  the  test  of  official  qualification,  as 


400  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

well  as  of  party  orthodoxy.  They  swarm  at  the  Federal  capi 
tal.  They  control  all  the  departments.  They  hold  the  Supreme 
Court,  and  with  it,  the  power  of  moulding  the  Constitution 
itself  to  suit  their  views.  They  fill  the  army  and  the  navy. 
They  manage  every  thing,  and  have  managed  every  thing  so 
long,  that  they  have  come  to  think  that  they  have  a  divine  right 
to  govern  us,  and  to  declare  openly,  that  if  they  cannot  be 
allowed  to  rule  the  Democratic  party,  and  through  it  the  nation, 
they  have  a  right  to  secede,  and  break  up  both.  They  may  be 
excused,  perhaps.  It  is  a  fault  inherent  in  the  false  relation 
which  they  maintain.  We  know  that  it  is  productive  of  bad 
habits  of  thought.  We  have  the  testimony  of  Jefferson  himself, 
that  it  engenders  arrogance,  and  fosters  a  spirit  which  is 
fatal  to  the  education  of  the  young.  The  man  who  is  accus 
tomed  to  rule  black  men,  will  soon  come,  by  a  very  natural  proc 
ess,  to  the  conclusion  that  he  has  a  right  to  rule  white  ones.  It 
is,  of  course,  galling  to  the  pride  of  a  man  so  educated,  that  he 
should  be  compelled  to  submit  to  the  rule  of  a  class  which  he 
despises.  If  the  association  of  compulsory  labor  with  a  black 
skin  has  degraded  the  black  man  here,  it  has  reacted  equally 
upon  labor  itself,  so  as  to  degrade  it  in  their  estimation;  and 
every  concession  made  by  the  North  to  the  threats  of  disunion — 
every  expression  of  unmanly  fear  on  our  parts — has  only  served 
to  confirm  the  slaveholder  in  the  opinion,  that  we  are  but  sneak 
ing  poltroons,  who  may  be  bullied  into  submission,  whenever  we 
cannot  be  bought  or  bribed.  I  am  free  to  confess,  as  a  Northern 
man,  that  we  have  done  all  we  could  to  encourage  the  formation 
of  this  opinion,  and  the  result  has  been  the  scenes  of  violence 
we  have  witnessed,  and  the  scorn  and  contumely,  to  which  so 
large  an  expression  has  been  given  by  Southern  presses  and 
Southern  orators.  If  we  had  stood  up  on  all  occasions  like  men, 
they  would  have  respected  at  least,  if  they  did  not  fear  us,  and 
we  should  have  heard  no  whisper  of  revolt,  no  loud  and  treasona 
ble  menaces  of  disunion.  Our  repeated  submissions  have  only 
increased  their  arrogance,  and  enhanced  the  extravagance  of 
their  demands.  Our  attempts  to  purchase  peace  by  pusillanimous 
concessions,  have  been  but  the  bait  thrown  by  the  Siberian 
mother  to  the  hungry  wolf,  which  was  no  sooner  devoured  than 
he  was  again  upon  her  heels.  The  spirit  of  slavery  is  not  to  be 
satisfied  or  appeased  by  any  amount  of  sacrifices.  The  Demo 
cratic  party  of  the  North  has  bankrupted  itself  for  this  pur 
pose,  and  the  return  is — what  it  deserved  to  be — ingratitude 
and  ruin.  Its  leaders  have  sounded  the  very  base  string  of 
servility,  and  what  has  been  the  result  to  themselves?  It  may 
be  read  in  the  fates  of  Buchanan  and  Douglas  both.  They  have 


A   NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      4OI 

failed  to  satisfy  this  exacting  and  insatiable  interest,  by  the 
humblest  of  services  and  the  deepest  of  humiliations,  and  have 
only  drawn  upon  themselves  the  contempt  and  hatred  of  their 
task  masters.  With  these  men  on  their  knees  before  them,  they 
look  in  amazement  upon  the  present  condition  of  political  parties 
in  the  North.  It  is,  in  their  eyes,  no  better  than  a  servile  insur 
rection.  The  first  impulse,  of  course,  was  to  correct  it  with  the 
lash,  or  the  bludgeon.  The  Northern  overseers  had  failed  to 
crush  out  the  revolt.  The  master  then  took  the  matter  into  his 
own  hands,  and  the  blood  of  Sumner  flowed  upon  the  pavement 
of  the  capitol,  and  the  whole  South  approved  and  cried,  "Well 
done !" 

And  now  let  me  inquire  how  far  this  issue  has  entered  into 
the  present  struggle.  Mr.  Douglas  complains  that  it  is  the  negro 
who  stands  in  the  way  of  all  beneficent  legislation,  and  of  every 
measure  of  relief  which  the  interests  of  Pennsylvania  demand. 
I  agree  with  him  there.  It  is  the  everlasting  negro  who  thrusts 
himself,  on  all  occasions,  in  the  way  of  progress,  and  hangs  like 
a  drag  upon  the  wheels  of  the  national  machine ;  and  it  is  on  the 
question  of  his  place  in  the  Government,  that  the  Democratic 
party  is  divided,  and  Judge  Douglas  is  himself  a  candidate.  It 
is  on  that  question,  too,  that  his  speeches  are  exclusively  made. 
I  respond  cordially  to  his  sentiment,  that  we  must  get  rid  of  the 
negro.  The  only  difference  between  us  is,  whether  this  shall  be 
done  by  shutting  him  out  entirely,  or  allowing  him  to  have  his 
own  way,  and  to  go  where  he  pleases.  We  have  tried  the  latter 
expedient  without  success.  Judge  Douglas  thinks  like  the 
"unjust  judge,"  that  it  is  the  only  way  of  escaping  the  annoy 
ance.  Upon  the  question  as  to  his  range,  he  affects  a  sublime 
indifference  here,  while  he  boasts  in  the  South,  of  having  added 
to  it  a  degree  and  a  half  of  latitude.  He  does  not  care  whether 
the  negro  is  voted  up  or  voted  down  in  the  territories,  so  long  as 
he  is  the  lord  of  the  ascendant  in  the  States.  He  claims  only 
that  he  shall  be  allowed  to  have  his  chance,  and  that  he  shall  be 
let  alone  by  the  Government,  while  he  stands  himself  upon  a 
platform,  whose  four  corners  are  borne  up  on  the  shoulders  of 
the  slave.  It  is  not  Democracy  that  he  represents.  That  had 
lofty  aspirations.  It  was  never  indifferent  upon  a  question  of 
slavery  or  freedom.  This  is  but  the  monstrous  birth,  engen 
dered  of  the  worse  than  incestuous  connection  between  the 
virgin  daughter  of  the  Revolution  and  the  slave.  It  has  rent 
the  entrails  of  the  parent  in  the  conception,  and  the  mother  that 
bore  it  might  well  start  back  at  the  apparition,  like  Sin  in  the 
sublime  allegory  of  Milton,  and  shriek  out — death.  It  shows 
fair  above — 


4O2  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"What  seems  its  head  the  likeness  of  a  kingly  crown  has  on; 
It  ends  below  in  many  a  scaly  fold,  voluminous  and  vast." 

There  is  no  feature  of  that  offspring,  variant  from  our  own, 
which  does  not  disclose  the  monstrous  parentage.  There  is  not 
a  plank  peculiar  to  that  platform  that  has  not  a  negro  under  it. 
There  is  not  even  a  sound  timber  in  its  construction,  which  does 
not  give  way  when  the  negro  sets  his  heavy  heel  upon  it.  Let 
us  rip  up  a  few  of  them,  and  see  whether  we  cannot  detect,  and 
drag  him  to  the  light. 

The  Republican  confession  of  faith  reiterates,  in  the  first 
place,  the  terms  of  the  great  Declaration,  and  proclaims  that 
"the  Constitution,  the  rights  of  the  States,  and  the  Union  itself, 
must  and  shall  be  preserved."  This  is  the  great  cardinal  prin 
ciple,  which  flames  in  its  forehead  like  the  meteor  light  of  an 
advancing  railway  train. 

The  Democratic  platform,  ignoring  the  Declaration  and  the 
Union  both — the  one,  of  course,  as  heterodox,  and  the  other,  I 
suppose,  as  of  doubtful  value — asserts  its  trust  in  the  people, 
and  declares  that  the  Government  is  one  of  limited  powers,  that 
the  grants  made  therein  are  to  be  strictly  construed,  and  that  it 
is  inexpedient  and  dangerous  to  exercise  any  powers  that  are 
doubtful. 

To  the  doctrine  that  this  is  a  Government  of  limited  powers, 
there  is  no  objection.  That  they  are  to  be  strictly  construed, 
however,  is  a  principle  which  is  only  invoked  when  any  truly 
national  object  is  proposed.  It  has  never  been  found  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  any  measure  which  was  intended  to  advance  the 
interests  of  slavery.  There,  the  interpretation  has  always  been 
latitudinarian  to  a  fault.  When  Louisiana  and  Florida  were 
acquired,  the  constitutional  barrier  gave  way.  When  Texas 
was  annexed,  the  same  drama  was  rehearsed.  And  now,  when 
Cuba  and  a  route  over  the  isthmus  are  to  be  secured,  we  find 
these  very  consistent  gentlemen  again  knocking  in  the  head, 
in  this  very  platform,  the  cardinal  principle  on  which  they 
profess  to  stand.  How  well  do  they  realize  the  creed  and  pol 
itics  of  that  old  Federalism,  which,  as  they  so  eloquently  enun 
ciate,  "conceives  no  imposture  too  monstrous  for  the  popular 
credulity !"  They  invent  the  sin,  which  the  proud  old  Federal 
party  would  have  scorned  to  commit,  and  then  father  it  upon 
them.  This  plank  is  a  sound  one,  if  it  were  not  so  elastic.  It 
is  too  weak  for  the  tread  of  the  ponderous  African. 

The  next  point  in  the  Republican  platform,  is  a  denuncia 
tion  of  the  extravagance  and  corruption  of  the  Administration, 
with  a  declaration  that  while  providing  revenue  for  the  Govern 
ment,  by  a  duty  on  imports,  sound  policy  requires  such  an  adjust- 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      403 

ment  of  these  duties,  as  shall  encourage  the  industrial  interests 
of  the  whole  country. 

The  Democratic  platform  declares,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
sound  policy  forbids  the  general  Government  from  fostering 
one  branch  of  industry  to  the  detriment  of  another,  or  from 
cherishing  the  interests  of  one  portion  of  our  confederacy  at  the 
expense  of  another — with  a  recommendation  of  the  most  rigid 
economy,  and  a  limitation  of  the  revenues  to  the  necessary 
expenses  of  the  Government. 

To  understand  these  dark  sayings — this  ambiguous  outgiv 
ing  of  the  two-faced,  and  now  two-headed  oracle,  we  must  have 
recourse  to  the  political  philosophers — the  cotton  doctors — of 
the  South,  who  frame  all  the  platforms  for  the  faithful — for 
the  interpretation.  The  idea  is,  that  the  encouragement  given 
to  manufacturers,  and  through  them,  as  well  as  more  directly, 
to  the  free  labor  and  agriculture  of  the  Northern  States,  is  a  tax 
upon  those  whose  labor  is  done  by  slaves,  and  who  grow  no 
grain  for  their  own  consumption.  They  insist  that  they  pay 
all  the  duties,  because,  as  they  allege,  they  have  to  pay  you  a 
higher  price  for  all  that  you  sell  them,  while  their  staple,  cotton, 
is  the  principal  export  of  the  country,  and  they  wish  to  buy 
your  grain  and  pork  at  their  own  prices,  while  they  purchase 
their  goods  from  their  British  customers.  They  want  no  pro 
tection  themselves,  and  insist  that  if  you  are  protected,  it  must 
be  necessarily  at  their  expense.  To  impose  a  duty,  therefore, 
for  the  protection  of  any  branch  of  industry,  is,  in  their  view, 
to  foster  one  branch  to  the  detriment  of  another,  and  to  cherish 
the  interests  of  one  portion  of  the  country  at  the  expense  of  the 
residue.  They  once  thought  differently,  and  then  protection 
was  the  order  of  the  day.  When  they  changed  their  minds,  the 
Democracy  of  the  North  changed  with  them,  and  the  American 
system  became  unpopular  and  obsolete.  And  this  is  the  doctrine 
which  Northern  Democrats  are  made  to  indorse  at  the  bidding 
of  the  men,  who  own  their  laborers,  and  think  that  capital  ought 
always  to  own  them !  If  they  do  not  already  own  their  patient 
followers  in  the  North,  who  shoulder  such  burdens  as  this,  and 
do  their  work  even  more  cheerfully  at  public  conventions  and 
in  Congress,  than  it  is  done  by  their  slaves  in  the  cotton  field,  it 
is  not  for  the  reason  that  they  are  not  quite  as  faithfully  served 
by  them.  I  beg  those  who  hear  me,  to  remember  that  slavery 
is  not  merely  a  question  of  color,  or  of  menial  or  predial — domes 
tic  or  agricultural — service.  The  slave  may  be  a  white  man,  and 
the  labor  may  be  done  in  the  newspaper,  in  the  convention,  on 
the  stump,  or  at  the  ballot-box.  The  only  difference  is — and  it 
is  an  important  one — that  while  the  white  slave  is  never  so 


404  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

much  respected  by  his  master  as  the  black  one — because  his 
condition  is  a  voluntary  one,  while  that  of  the  negro  is  not — he 
enjoys,  at  least,  the  privilege  of  asserting  his  freedom,  and  reas- 
suming  his  abdicated  manhood,  whenever  he  thinks  proper,  with 
out  borrowing  the  aid  of  an  underground  rail  road.  The  tariff 
is  a  question  of  free  and  slave  labor  only.  The  right  to  protect 
our  own  industry  was  one  of  the  first  privileges  asserted  upon 
our  emancipation  from  the  yoke  of  the  mother  country.  It  con 
tinued  to  be  our  policy  until  it  came  to  be  regarded  as  at  variance 
with  the  interests  of  the  slave  owner.  It  was,  at  one  time,  the 
almost  unanimous  sentiment  of  the  Democracy  of  the  North. 
There  was  no  difference  of  opinion  on  that  subject  here,  at  all 
events.  The  right  won  for  the  freeman  in  the  war  of  Inde 
pendence,  went  down,  however,  in  the  conflict  with  the  labor 
of  the  slave — and  this  plank,  which  is  a  central  one,  is  resting 
directly  upon  his  shoulders. 

The  very  grave  recommendation,  however,  of  "a  most  rigid 
economy"  in  the  face  of  an  expenditure  of  some  eighty  millions 
of  dollars  per  annum,  and  with  an  administration  of  the  same 
party,  the  most  extravagant,  corrupt  and  profligate  that  this 
nation,  or  the  world  itself,  has  ever  seen,  is  not  the  least  amusing 
feature  of  the  anti-tariff  platform.  Its  explanation  is  to  be  found, 
however,  in  the  suggestion  of  a  limitation  of  the  revenue  to  the 
strictest  necessities  of  the  Government.  The  idea  is  to  avoid, 
by  all  means,  the  necessity  for  a  tariff,  by  expending  nothing 
upon  our  rivers  or  our  lakes — nothing  to  settle  up  and  improve 
the  boundless  territories  committed  to  our  charge,  as  the  future 
home  of  countless  millions  of  freemen — nothing  for  any  other 
purpose  under  heaven,  except  to  acquire  new  territories  for 
slavery,  as  though  it  was  the  mission  of  this  Government,  not 
"to  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity," 
but  to  forge  chains  for  unborn  generations,  and  to  hang  the 
black  cloud  of  human  bondage  over  half  a  continent !  The  most 
rigid  parsimony  to  avoid  a  tariff,  unless  the  interests  of  slavery 
can  be  best  promoted  by  the  most  profuse  expenditure.  Then 
money  is  no  object.  An  expensive  war  in  Florida — another  in 
Mexico — assumption  of  debts  in  the  case  of  Texas — a  hundred 
millions,  or  a  stupendous  act  of  piracy,  if  necessary,  to  secure 
the  gem  of  the  Antilles,  which  is  supposed,  like  another  dragon, 
to  guard  the  entrance  to  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides — all  this, 
purchased  by  the  blood,  and  levied  upon  the  labor,  and  taken 
from  the  pockets  of  the  Northern  freemen — as  is  the  support 
of  the  army,  which  is  kept  up  at  our  expense  to  overawe  the 
slaves,  and  to  furnish  an  asylum  for  the  cadets  of  the  aristocratic 
and  labor-hating  families  of  the  South — is  nothing  with  these 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS  IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      405 

rigid  economists,  who  are  so  solicitous  to  limit  the  revenues  to 
the  absolute  necessities  of  the  Government.  All  these  are  neces 
saries  amongst  those  strict  constructionists,  who  cannot  afford 
the  money,  or  find  the  power  in  the  Constitution,  to  deepen  a 
shoal  upon  your  lakes,  or  clear  out  a  bar  or  a  snag  from  your 
great  rivers,  though  the  lives  of  all  the  boatmen,  and  the  mer 
chandise  and  produce  of  all  the  North,  were  to  depend  on  it. 
What  is  the  value  of  a  free  white  laboring  man  in  the  North,  in 
comparison  with  the  black  chattels  which  sell  for  $1,500  apiece? 
Why,  there  was  no  difficulty  in  finding  authority  in  the  Con 
stitution  for  paying  for  a  whole  cargo  of  negroes  in  the  Amis- 
tad  !  We  shall  have  a  bill,  I  suppose,  to  foot  by  and  by  for  the 
ebony  chattel  that  was  shot  or  drowned  in  the  Potomac  on  the 
occasion  of  the  John  Brown  raid.  As  to  a  boatman,  however — 
one  of  your  Northern  mud-sills — a  piece  of  the  stuff  out  of 
\vhich  we  propose  to  fashion  a  President — he  is  worth  nothing 
unless  he  is  owned  by  somebody,  on  the  principle  of  the  Demo 
cratic  candidate  for  the  Vice  Presidency,  that  capital  should 
always  own  labor.  Well,  if  a  working  man  must  have  an  owner 
to  give  him  value,  we  will  even  play  the  master  ourselves  for 
once,  and  admit  that  "honest  old  Abe"  belongs  to  us.  I  trust, 
however,  that  nobody  will  be  tempted  by  what  I  say,  to  go  over 
to  the  enemy,  in  order  that  he  may  have  a  price  set  upon  his 
head. 

The  next  point  I  shall  consider,  is  that  which  relates  to  the 
public  lands.  On  this,  the  platform  of  the  Republican  party 
embodies  a  declaration  in  favor  of  settlers'  rights,  and  of  the 
passage  of  the  homestead  bill,  with  an  emphatic  protest  against 
the  haughy  assumption  of  the  Southern  oligarchs,  that  these 
settlers  are  no  better  than  paupers.  The  Democratic  platform, 
ignoring  this  question  entirely,  proclaims  that  the  proceeds  of 
the  sales  are  to  be  sacredly  applied  to  the  national  objects  speci 
fied  in  the  Constitution,  and  protests  vigorously  against  any  dis 
tribution  amongst  the  States,  as  impolitic  and  unconstitutional. 

There  is  nothing,  of  course,  in  favor  of  a  homestead  bill. 
The  provision  of  homes  for  the  settlers,  is  one  of  those  objects 
which  have  not  been  "specified  in  the  Constitution."  That  is 
a  provision  for  the  multiplication  of  freemen  only,  and  is,  of 
course,  in  their  judgment,  entirely  sectional.  If  the  object  had 
been  to  provide  slave  homes,  instead  of  free  ones — not  lands 
for  the  landless,  but  "niggers  for  the  niggerless,"  that  would  have 
been  indisputably  national.  To  distribute  the  proceeds  among 
the  States  for  purposes  of  education  or  internal  improvement,  or 
to  apportion  out  the  lands  themselves  for  the  endowment  of 
agricultural  colleges,  is  equally  objectionable,  for  the  same  rea- 


406  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

sons.  Schools  are  for  freemen,  and  highways  an  inconvenient 
facility  for  negroes.  For  any  purpose,  however,  it  would  impair 
the  revenues,  and  increase  the  necessity  for  a  tariff. 

But  why  is  it  that  the  Democratic  party  is  so  extremely 
averse  to  the  distribution  of  the  public  lands,  even  among  the 
States  themselves?  It  was  not  always  so.  Is  it  because  there 
is  anything  unjust  in  doing  again,  what  was  done  before  under 
the  administration  of  General  Jackson?  The  thing  seems 
equitable  enough,  even  without  reference  to  the  terms  of  the 
cessions  themselves.  Can  any  Northern  man  imagine  any  pos 
sible  objection  to  it?  Here  is  a  fund  sufficient  for  the  education 
of  our  posterity  for  all  future  time,  as  well  as  for  the  improve 
ment  of  all  those  natural  highways,  and  the  construction 
of  all  those  artificial  means  of  communication,  which  are 
so  essential  to  develop  our  resources,  and  to  bind  this  Union 
together  with  "hooks  of  steel."  The  doctrine  of  their  platform 
is  alike  hostile  to  the  grants  made  to  the  new  States  for  rail 
roads  and  schools,  as  it  is  to  the  endowment  of  agricultural  col 
leges  for  the  old  ones.  Are  these  objects  which  are  worthy  of  the 
fostering  care  of  the  Government?  Nobody  here  will  venture 
to  deny  that  they  are.  How  is  it,  then,  that  this  language  has 
found  its  way  into  the  Democratic  platform?  It  is  nothing  but 
the  shadow  of  the  everlasting  negro  which  falls  again  across 
our  path,  and  darkens  the  fairest  prospect  that  Providence  has 
ever  opened  to  the  vision  of  man.  To  give  away  the  lands  to 
actual  settlers,  is  to  make  Free  States.  To  educate  the  people, 
is  to  make  free  men.  To  provide  them  with  commercial  facili 
ties,  is  to  stimulate  their  growth.  To  divert  these  revenues  from 
the  Federal  treasury,  would  be  to  create  a  necessity  for  additional 
duties,  or,  perhaps,  to  make  it  necessary  to  tax  the  negro  him 
self.  It  is,  therefore,  another  tariff  question,  and  the  negro 
again  thrusts  forward  his  woolly  muzzle  to  frighten  us  from  our 
propriety,  or  pops  up  through  the  platform  floor,  like  the  ghost 
of  Banquo,  "to  push  us  from  our  stools." 

The  next  noteworthy  point  in  the  Republican  platform,  is 
an  affirmance  of  the  right  of  Congress  to  make  appropriations 
for  river  and  harbor  improvements,  to  accommodate  an  existing 
commerce,  and  to  protect  the  lives  and  property  of  those  that 
are  engaged  in  it.  The  Democratic  platform  in  its  corresponding 
clause,  asserts  that  the  Constitution  does  not  confer  on  Con 
gress  the  power  to  commence  and  carry  on  a  general  system  of 
internal  improvements. 

The  Republican  doctrine  was  intended  only  to  place  the 
interior  and  the  Great  West,  which  have  been  so  long  neglected 
by  the  Government,  upon  a  footing  of  equality  with  the  seaboard 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      407 

States;  and  to  make  all  this  sure,  they  have  singled  out  a 
Western  boatman,  whose  business  it  will  be  to  see  that  their 
interests  shall  not  be  ridden  down  hereafter,  by  affected  consti 
tutional  scruples  in  regard  to  the  power  of  Congress  in  the 
premises. 

The  Democratic  doctrine  involves  a  condemnation  of  the 
whole  practice  of  the  Government  from  the  beginning.  A  truly 
national  man,  imbued  with  the  right  spirit,  proud  of  his  coun 
try,  as  every  American  ought  to  be,  and  keenly  alive  to  all  its 
susceptibilities,  would  be  inclined  to  spare  no  means  which 
might  be  required,  to  develop  its  great  resources,  and  to  make 
it  what  a  beneficent  Providence,  obviously  intended  it  to  be 
when  the  basins  of  its  great  inland  seas  were  hollowed  out,  and 
its  mighty  rivers  showered  down  upon  its  plains.  These  were 
the  views  of  the  Fathers,  whose  bones  are  now  reposing  under 
Southern  soil.  These  were  the  sentiments  of  that  liberal, 
broad-minded,  and  truly  American  statesman — the  last  of  the 
race  of  mighty  men  of  the  South — who  now  reposes  beneath  the 
oaks  of  Ashland,  rejected  of  his  own,  because  his  heart  was  too 
big  to  be  circumscribed  by  State  lines,  and  his  vision  too  far- 
reaching,  to  encourage  either  the  perpetuation  of  the  curse  of 
human  bondage  at  home,  or  its  diffusion  over  the  free  territories 
of  the  republic.  But  the  Fathers  are  dead  and  well  nigh  forgot 
ten,  or  remembered  only  to  be  condemned,  while  the  party  which 
claims  to  be  exclusively  national,  and  to  follow  them  by  a  sort 
of  apostolic  succession — but  which  its  reputed  fathers  would  not 
even  know — has  come  to  enter  its  solemn  protest  against  all 
expenditures  which  look  to  the  good  of  the  whole  Union.  And 
why  is  this  ?  Is  it  because  Northern  men  are  of  the  opinion  that 
these  objects  are  not  truly  national?  It  is  the  negro  again  who 
lays  his  hand  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  nation,  and  bids  it  stop. 
These  things  cost  money,  and  do  not  help  slavery.  They  will 
deplete  the  treasury,  and  it  must  be  replenished  by  additional 
duties.  It  is  a  tariff  question  again.  The  negro  must  have  his 
way,  as  usual,  and  the  Northern  Democratic  leader  bows  his 
head,  and  whispers  softly,  "As  you  please." 

The  next  point  upon  which  the  platforms  differ,  is  that  of  a 
rail  road  to  the  Pacific ;  and  this  is,  of  course,  an  internal 
improvement  question  also.  On  this  question,  while  it  seems  to 
be  admitted  on  all  hands  that  the  interests  of  the  country  require 
its  construction,  the  Republicans  say,  that  the  Government  ought 
to  render  immediate  and  efficient  aid  to  it;  the  Douglas  Demo 
crats  pledge  such  constitutional  government  aid  as  will  insure  it 
at  the  earliest  practicable  period;  and  the  Breckinridge  Demo 
crats  undertake  to  use  every  means  in  their  power  to  secure  the 


408  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

passage  of  some  bill,  to  the  extent  of  the  constitutional  authority 
of  Congress,  for  the  same  purpose. 

Now  here  is  a  virtual  surrender  of  the  position  previously 
assumed  by  them,  under  the  pressure  of  a  strong  public  opinion 
in  the  North,  and  by  way  of  bid  for  the  votes  of  the  Pacific 
slope.  But  mark  the  caution  with  which  these  Democratic 
conclaves  dispose  of  this  great  question !  See  how  gingerly 
they  deal  with  it.  The  Douglas  men  are  willing  to  pledge  "such 
constitutional  aid  as  will  secure  it."  They  have  already  declared, 
however,  that  the  Government  has  no  constitutional  power  to 
commence  and  carry  on  a  general  system  of  internal  improve 
ments,  and  that  the  proceeds  of  the  public  lands  ought  to  be 
sacredly  applied  to  "the  national  objects  specified  in  the  Constitu 
tion."  The  Breckinridge  men,  more  cautious  still,  are  only 
willing  to  pledge  their  efforts  to  secure  the  passage  of  some  bill, 
to  the  extent  of  the  constitutional  authority  of  Congress,  for  the 
same  purpose.  What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  reserve  ?  Is  the 
whole  thing  intended  as  a  cheat  and  a  juggle,  or  have  they  felt 
the  utter  incompatibility  of  this  pledge  with  the  whole  spirit  of 
their  platform?  They  made  it  solemnly,  but  reluctantly,  at 
Cincinnati.  As  soon  as  they  had  secured  the  vote  of  California, 
upon  the  faith  of  it,  it  was  consigned  to  the  limbo  of  vanities — 
sometimes  called  "the  paradise  of  fools" — to  be  drawn  forth 
again,  and  again  violated,  as  it  was  before.  The  idea  that  the 
South  will  ever  consent  to  so  large  an  expenditure  as  it  would 
involve,  unless  it  was  for  an  exclusively  Southern  road,  is  at  war 
alike  with  their  practice  and  their  principles.  Their  subsequent 
declaration  in  regard  to  a  free  passage  across  the  Isthmus, 
shows  that  they  do  not  seriously  think  of  an  internal  communica 
tion  by  rail  road  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  States.  If 
it  was  a  question  as  to  the  acquisition  of  Cuba,  or  the  purchase 
of  another  slice  of  Mexico,  they  have  shown  us  already  that  the 
expense  would  be  no  consideration.  To  span  the  continent  with 
an  iron  highway  would  be  a  new  phase  in  their  history.  It  would 
be  as  fatal  to  the  negro,  in  their  view,  as  it  is  likely  to  prove  to 
the  Indian,  and  the  grizzly  bear,  and  the  buffalo.  It  will  bleed 
the  treasury,  at  all  events,  and  the  negro  who  sits  upon  the  strong 
box,  again  shakes  his  ambrosial  locks,  and  thunders,  "No." 

The  next  plank  over  which  we  stumble  has  relation  to  our 
foreign  policy.  On  this,  the  Democratic  conventions  agree  in 
affirming  what  they  call  the  Monroe  doctrine;  asserting  the 
right  to  control  the  inter-oceanic  passage  across  the  Isthmus — 
the  duty  of  maintaining  an  ascendancy  in  the  Gulf — and  the  policy 
of  acquiring  the  island  of  Cuba,  on  such  terms  as  shall  be  honor- 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      409 

able  to  ourselves,  and  just  to  Spain — an  improvement,  by  the 
way,  upon  the  morality  of  the  Ostend  Circular. 

This  plank  is  all  ebony.  No  one  can  fail  to  see  the  negro 
here.  It  points  all  southward.  Newfoundland,  Nova  Scotia, 
New  Brunswick,  the  Canadas,  the  Hudson's  Bay  territories, 
Vancouver's  Island,  all  British  America,  can  find  no  place  in  it. 
Instead  of  enlarging  in  that  direction,  and  seeking  an  alliance 
with  men  of  our  own  race,  lineage  and  faith,  the  Democracy  falls 
back  on  the  Aroostook  and  the  St.  Johns,  or  subsides  amiably 
from  "54°  40'  or  fight,"  down  to  49°,  and  free  trade  with  our 
ancient  enemy,  while  it  turns  lovingly  to  the  embrace  of  the 
cruel  Spaniard  and  the  unhappy  slave.  All  that  is  wanted  to 
round  this  plank  into  perfect  fullness,  is  a  declaration  in  favor 
of  the  opening  of  the  slave-trade.  That  will  come,  however,  in 
the  train  of  Cuba.  It  has  come  already  upon  the  coast  of  Flor 
ida.  The  South  defends  and  a  Democratic  administration  winks 
at  it.  Cuba  will  furnish  an  outpost — an  intermediate  missionary 
station,  in  the  great  process  of  evangelizing  the  African  tribes. 
Her  harbors  have  always  been  the  cruising  grounds  of  the  slaver 
and  the  buccaneer.  The  sullen  plunge  of  the  dark-skinned  Afri 
can  mother,  victim  of  the  horrors  of  the  middle  passage,  and  the 
bubbling  cry  of  the  strong  swimmer,  who  was  hurled  from  the 
corsair's  deck,  have  alike  sent  many  a  tell-tale  ripple  to  her 
accursed  shores.  What  fitter  entrepot  for  the  commerce  in 
human  flesh?  But  do  the  Democrats  of  the  Free  States  desire 
all  this  ?  No,  God  forbid !  There  is  not  a  right-minded  man 
amongst  them,  who  would  not  shrink  from  the  naked  proposition 
with  undissembled  horror.  How,  then,  has  it  found  its  way  into 
their  platform  ?  It  is  because  the  slave  owner  was  its  architect, 
and  their  own  representatives  have  betrayed  them. 

The  next  point  on  which  the  platforms  differ  is  that  which 
relates  to  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  territories.  This  is 
the  complement  of  the  declaration  in  regard  to  the  public  lands. 
And  here  the  negro  himself,  who  has  been  skulking  underneath 
the  platform,  steps  boldly  and  squarely  upon  it,  and  claims  his 
share  of  them.  His  share,  however,  is  always  a  monopoly.  If 
he  takes  any,  he  appropriates  the  whole,  because  he  excludes 
the  freeman.  As  in  the  case  of  Abraham  and  Lot :  "The  land  is 
not  able  to  bear  us  both,  that  we  may  dwell  together."  The 
Republicans,  standing  upon  the  doctrines  and  practice  of  the 
Fathers,  and  claiming,  like  the  Samaritan  woman,  that  they  have 
also  "Abraham"  for  their  father,  say  that  he  has  range  enough. 
The  Democrats  insist  that  he  is  a  privileged  traveler,  a  sort  of 
cosmopolitan,  who  must  be  allowed  to  choose  his  own  domicile. 
His  right  to  do  so  I  shall  examine  hereafter. 


4IO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Here,  then,  is  the  platform  of  the  party,  with  a  negro  under 
every  plank  of  it,  which  differs  essentially  from  our  own.  Distil 
it,  and  evaporate,  it,  and  there  is  nothing  left  in  the  bottom  of 
the  alembic,  except  the  negro,  who  calls  us  "black,"  just  because 
we  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  him.  The  time  was  when  every 
principle  which  the  Republican  party  now  proclaims,  was  held 
and  maintained  by  the  Democratic  party  itself,  from  the  tariff 
down  through  the  whole  chapter  of  variations.  The  reiterated 
declarations  of  the  Legislature  of  Pennsylvania,  on  the  subject 
of  the  tariff  and  internal  improvements  by  the  general  Govern 
ment — the  unanimous  protest  of  the  same  Legislature  against 
the  admission  of  Missouri  as  a  slave  State  in  1819 — and  the 
equally  unanimous  declaration  of  the  Democratic  convention 
assembled  at  Pittsburgh,  in  July,  1849 — are  some  of  the  evidences 
of  it  here.  The  Democrats  of  the  North  have  carried  these 
opinions,  one  by  one,  and  laid  them  down,  along  with  the  great 
majority  principle  itself,  at  the  feet  of  the  slave  power.  Upon 
that  shrine  of  abominations — upon  the  polluted  altars  of  that 
horrid  Moloch — they  have  offered  up  every  thing  that  was 
demanded,  until  they  were  called  upon  to  pass  their  own  children 
through  the  fire,  upon  the  plains  of  Kansas.  It  made  no  differ 
ence  to  the  Northern  leaders  what  was  the  demand.  They  never 
complained  that  it  was  too  large.  They  looked  for  personal 
rewards  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  the  submission.  The 
people  were  patient  and  docilej  and  accustomed  to  submit  to 
every  thing,  because  they  were  honest,  and  suspected  no  fraud  in 
others.  It  was  not  until  they  had  come  near  flinging  their  riders, 
in  1856,  that  the  inquiry  came  to  be  made,  How  much  will  they 
bear  ?  It  was  in  the  Charleston  Convention,  that  was  first  heard 
the  unusual  language,  ''We  have  no  objection  individually  to 
this  or  that  doctrine,  but  we  fear  our  people  will  not  submit  to 
it."  It  was  the  same  feeling  precisely,  which  checked  up  the  fiery 
Douglas  on  the  Lecompton  issue.  He  had  bidden  high  for 
Southern  votes.  It  had  cost  his  party  many  States.  He  found 
that  he  could  bid  no  higher,  without  the  sacrifice  of  all  the 
Northern  ones.  He  now  endeavors  to  emulate  the  feat  of  the 
circus  rider,  by  bestriding  two  horses  of  very  different  mettle 
and  action,  at  the  same  time.  To  span  the  gulf  which  lies 
between  them,  would  require  the  legs  of  a  Colossus,  and  his  are 
said  to  be  none  of  the  longest.  It  is  too  late,  however — "too 
late" — as  a  sepulchral  voice  exclaimed  from  the  galleries  of  the 
French  Chamber  of  Deputies,  when  it  was  proposed  to  proclaim 
the  Duke  of  Berri  as  their  king.  The  wedge  which  he  drove 
through  the  Missouri  Compromise,  has  rent  these  two  interests 
in  twain,  as  by  an  earthquake  shock.  Kansas,  bathed  in  blood, 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      4!  I 

and  smoking  with  the  embers  of  burning  dwellings,  has  drifted 
North,  while  the  architect  of  all  this  ruin — the  great  tempter, 
who  plucked  the  forbidden  fruit,  and  in  an  evil  hour  persuaded 
the  South  to  eat  at  the  expense  of  faith  and  honor — is  floating, 
like  a  polar  bear,  between  the  separating  floes.  It  was  his  destiny, 
apparently,  under  Providence,  to  precipitate  this  crisis — which 
was  sure  to  come,  at  all  events — by  an  act  of  transcendent  per 
fidy.  Without  taking  any  thing,  even  a  "barren  sceptre,"  by 
the  act,  he  has  been  but  the  unconscious  instrument  of  a  great 
deliverance.  I  am  inclined  to  thank  him,  therefore — not  for  the 
motive,  but  for  the  act.  It  disenchanted  the  North.  It  showed 
them  what  Democracy  had  now  come  to  signify.  It  severed  the 
invisible  chain  which  bound  the  Northern  Democrat  to  the  car 
of  this  Juggernaut.  It  sealed  the  doom  of  the  slave  power.  The 
blood  which  smoked  to  heaven  from  the  face  of  the  broad  prairie, 
had  not  been  shed  in  vain.  Nor  was  it  in  vain  that  the  heart  of 
that  old  man,,  whom  God  Almighty  seems  to  have  raised  up  for 
this  especial  purpose,  was  hardened,  like  that  of  Pharoah,  to  the 
cries  of  a  suffering  people.  The  whilom  great  Democratic  party 
now  lies  wounded,  bleeding,  distracted,  wrecked,  upon  that  very 
question  to  which  it  had  sacrificed  its  whole  hereditary  wealth 
of  principle.  "By  a  sort  of  poetic  justice,  it  dies  of  the  negro,  and 
by  its  own  right  hand.  The  strong  man  perishes  in  agonies  and 
convulsions,  clutching  at  the  falling  rein,  despairing,  blasphem 
ing,  cursing  the  day  in  which  the  nation  was  born,  and  calling 
down  the  red  lightning  of  heaven  upon  this  once  glorious  Union, 
which  he  is  no  longer  to  rule.  And  now,  the  apostate  President, 
if  he  ever  hated  the  party  which  has  taken  him  to  its  bosom,  as 
he  is  said  to  have  done,  may  exult  in  a  glorious  revenge.  He 
will  see  it  in  its  grave  on  the  fourth  of  March  next,  helped 
thither  by  his  own  hand,  and  covered  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
double  damnation  of  the  traitor  and  the  parricide. 

And  yet  we  are  told,  that  it  is  we  only  who  are  always  thrust 
ing  the  negro  into  the  foreground,  and  interfering  with  the 
property  and  the  social  rights  of  our  Southern  brethren.  For  my 
own  part,  revolting  and  unjust  as  is  the  condition  of  slavery, 
I  am  free  to  own  that  its  prevalence  here,  and  the  habitual  asso 
ciation  of  the  black  man  with  the  idea  of  dependence  and  sub 
jection,  had  blunted  my  own  perceptions  of  the  wrong  which  he 
was  suffering.  I  was  educated,  like  other  Americans,  not  to 
look  upon  him  in  his  humanitarian  aspect,  but  in  his  political  and 
economical  relations,  as  a  working  machine,  and  an  element  of 
political  power.  I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  if  the  South 
loved  slavery — if  it  was  satisfied  that  its  material  interests  were 
advanced  by  it — it  was  not  our  business  to  interfere,  even  in  the 


412  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

way  of  advice.  Although  dissatisfied  with  the  unequal  bargain 
which  gave  to  the  Slave  States  a  representation  on  the  basis  of 
property,  without  any  practical  equivalent  to  us — if  it  were  pos 
sible  to  imagine  an  equivalent — and  by  a  singular  anomaly, 
erected  that  which  was  a  source  of  physical  and  moral  weakness, 
into  an  element  of  political  power,  I  was  not  unwilling  to  com 
promise,  upon  the  understanding  that  if  the  negro  would  let  me 
alone,  I  would  not  disturb  him.  The  experience  of  this  country 
has,  however,  shown  that  the  negro  is  not  to  be  disposed  of  in 
this  way.  He  is  essentially  aggressive.  From  the  foundation 
of  this  Government,  he  has  never  been  lost  sight  of  by  his  owner. 
I  have  already  shown  you  that  there  was  a  principle  of  cohesion 
there  so  strong,  that,  however  divided  upon  all  other  questions, 
those  questions  were  all  sure  to  be  subordinated  to  this,  and  that, 
by  these  means,  a  little  oligarchy  of  some  350,000  men  had  been 
enabled  to  take  and  hold  the  possession  of  this  Government,  and 
to  control  its  policy,  in  the  face  of  more  than  twenty  millions  of 
freemen.  It  is  idle,  therefore,  to  say  that  the  negro  is  a  staple 
commodity  of  ours,  when  it  is  through  him,  and  by  him  only,  that 
the  South  has  governed  us.  It  is  only  because  we  have  ignored 
him  that  they  have  succeeded  so  effectually  in  doing  it.  When 
he  encroaches  on  our  territories,  and  we  resist,  we  are  denounced 
as  sectional,  because  it  is  the  Free  States  only  that  unite  with  us 
— although  it  is  well  known  that  they  will  not  allow  our  opinions 
to  be  even  promulgated  amongst  them — while  the  fact  that  the 
Slave  States  are  united  under  this  iron  rule  of  unconstitutional 
exclusion,  is  taken  as  the  evidence  that  they  are  national !  The 
debates  in  the  last  Congress,  and  the  schism  at  Charleston,  will 
show  that  the  everlasting  negro  has  become  an  apple  of  discord 
at  home,  and  broken  the  peace  and  harmony  of  the  great  Demo 
cratic  family  throughout  the  nation — and  now  they  are  section- 
alized  like  ourselves. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  events  of  the  last  few  years  have 
shown  that  we  have  an  abiding  political  interest  in  the  question 
of  negro  slavery.  So  far  as  it  may  affect  the  future  of  this  great 
Republic — so  far  as  it  is  likely  to  require  the  power  of  the  nation 
for  its  protection — it  is  our  question  as  well  as  theirs.  The  slave 
holders  have  spared  no  pains  within  the  last  few  years,  to  show  us 
that  the  slavery  of  the  black  man  is  inconsistent  with  the  freedom 
of  the  white  man.  In  its  infancy  its  evils  were  not  so  apparent, 
although  it  is  known  to  have  disabled  some  of  the  Southern 
States  from  furnishing  their  proper  contingents  to  the  war  of  the 
Revolution.  It  stands  confessed  now  by  the  unanimous  voice  of 
the  South,  that  there  is  no  security  for  the  master  except  in  the 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      413 

ignorance  of  the  slave — in  the  suppression  of  all  knowledge — and 
in  the  denial  to  the  citizens  of  other  States  of  all  freedom  of 
speech  on  that  question.  It  may  be  that  the  apprehensions  of  the 
master  are  well  grounded.  I  am  willing  to  admit,  if  necessary, 
that  large  allowances  are  to  be  made  for  the  panic  terror  occa 
sioned  by  the  mad  foray  of  John  Brown,  as  well  as  for  that 
which  is  now  prevailing  so  extensively  in  Texas.  They  are  per 
haps  authorized  by  the  condition  of  society  in  both  those  States. 
If  it  be  true,  however,  what  a  state  of  things  is  that  which  we 
are  asked  to  extend?  It  seems  to  me,  that  these  facts  admon 
ish  us  of  the  necessity  of  laying  our  hands  upon  this  dangerous 
institution,  and  preventing  its  further  diffusion  throughout  this 
nation.  To  allow  it  to  spread,  and  to  admit  other  States  into  the 
Union  upon  the  same  terms,  is  to  render  ourselves  responsible 
as  a  people  for  its  encouragement — as  the  people  of  the  North, 
who  assisted  in  the  original  importation,  are  already  claimed  to 
be.  It  has  taken  possession  already  of  the  fairest  portion  of  our 
continent.  It  cannot  endure  forever.  Those  who  think  it  can 
have  no  end,  because  it  seems  to  have  no  beginning  within  the 
historic  period,  forget  that  the  slavery  of  the  black  man,  except 
perhaps  so  far  as  it  is  attested  by  Egyptian  monuments,  is  com 
paratively  modern,  and  that  it  is  only  a  few  centuries — the 
briefest  spar  in  the  history  of  our  race — that  have  witnessed  the 
emancipation  of  the  great  families  of  men  who  now  govern  the 
earth.  The  half  of  England  would  be  in  bondage  yet,  if  its 
courts  had  been  animated  by  the  spirit  which  now  rules  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  It  must  have  an  end, 
unless  there  is  something  peculiar  in  the  complexion  of  the  negro 
to  render  it  impossible — and  that  is  indeed  the  grand  difficulty. 
God  forbid,  however,  that  we  should  be  instrumental  in  its 
propagation ! 

But  how  is  this  great  question  to  be  settled?  It  is  even  now 
like  one  of  the  plagues  of  Egypt.  It  overflows  our  land,  and 
finds  its  way  into  our  kneading  troughs.  It  interferes  with  our 
labor — it  spurns  the  right  of  petition — it  denies  to  us  the  privi 
leges  of  citizens  in  the  States  where  it  prevails.  While  it  com 
bines  itself,  it  threatens  us  with  Sedition  Laws,  to  be  adminis 
tered  by  slaveholding  judges,  for  the  purpose  of  repressing  all 
combinations  amongst  freemen,  to  arrest  its  progress,  and  pro 
tect  themselves.  It  looms  up  in  the  dim  and  shadowy  future 
with  dimensions  still  more  gigantic.  This  pitchy  cloud  warping 
up  on  the  Southern  wind,  at  first  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand, 
already  hangs  over  our  subject  realms,  like  night,  and  darkens 
all  the  land : 


414  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"A  multitude  like  which  the  populous  North 
Poured  never  from  her  frozen  loins,  to  pass 
Rhene   or  the   Danaw,  when  her  barbarous  sons 
Came  like  a  deluge  on  the  South,  and  spread 
Beneath  Gibraltar  to  the   Lybian  sands." 

A  tempest  is  in  its  sulphurous  womb.  What  a  problem  does 
it  make,  to  be  solved  by  our  posterity !  At  the  present  rate  of 
increase,  another  century's  sun  will  look  down  on  sixty-four 
millions  of  negroes  in  the  United  States.  What  is  to  become  of 
them  and  us?  Re-open  the  slave-trade — as  you  may  do,  if 
slavery  is  right,  and  will  if  it  is  not  checked — and  what  an  addi 
tional  deluge  will  be  upon  us?  And  what  is  to  be  the  result? 
What  sort  of  government  will  it  require  to  hold  all  these  slaves 
in  subjection,  if  it  can  be  done  at  all?  Certainly  not  a  Repub 
lican  one.  But  they  cannot  be  so  held.  There  will  be  an  exodus 
sooner  or  later,  over  the  rivers,  and  through  the  savannahs  of 
the  South- West,  marked,  it  may  be,  with  scenes  before  which 
the  puny  exploits  of  the  border  ruffians  of  Missouri  will  pale. 
The  bleaching  process  which  has  been  been  going  on  in  Vir 
ginia,  "Mother  of  States  and  of  Statesmen,"  now  descended 
from  her  original  rank,  and  converted  with  elements  of  wealth 
unequaled  in  this  Union,  into  a  mere  breeder  of  slaves — that  proc 
ess  which  drew  the  attention  of  La  Fayette,  when  he  returned 
here  in  1824 — will  not  answer.  If  the  efforts  of  man  could 
succeed  in  establishing  a  permanent  intermediate  variety,  the 
product  of  that  union,  violating  a  law  of  nature,  would  be  on 
hand  to  lead  their  hosts,  and  avenge  the  wrongs  of  the  black 
man.  The  infusion  of  white  blood,  without  conveying  the 
privileges  of  white  men,  will  be  fatal  to  all  subordination.  And 
this  is,  perhaps,  the  process  by  which  the  great  question  is  to  be 
solved.  There  is  always  an  avenging  Nemesis  upon  the  foot 
steps  of  a  great  wrong.  Providence  works  by  processes,  which, 
though  sure,  are  always  so  slow  as  to  blind  the  observer  to  the 
laws  by  which  they  are  effected.  The  slave  has  already  blasted 
the  soil  wherever  he  has  set  his  foot.  It  was  the  boast  of  the 
destroying  Hun,  that  no  blade  of  grass  ever  grew  beneath  the 
feet  of  his  war  horse.  So  it  is  with  the  slave.  The  verdure 
perishes  where  he  treads,  and  the  earth  refuses  to  give  forth  its 
increase.  His  march  is  like  that  of  the  army  worm,  in  search 
of  new  pastures  to  devastate  and  destroy.  And  this  is  the  result 
of  the  law,  that  man  will  not  work  as  he  ought,  unless  he  is 
allowed  to  work  for  himself.  He  changes  the  face  of  society 
also  as  he  moves  along.  The  patrol — the  police — the  army — 
general  espionage — domiciliary  visitation — the  suppression  of  the 
book  and  the  newspaper — the  interdict  upon  speech  and  thought 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      415 

— the  destruction  of  all  social  intercourse — the  banishment  of 
the  stranger — the  exile  of  the  citizen — the  weakness  and  inse 
curity  of  the  social  state — laws  that  would  shame  the  bloodiest 
of  the  Code  of  Draco — nay,  barbarism  itself — all  these  compose 
the  grand  cortege  which  follows  in  the  train  of  Slavery.  And 
this  is  no  fancy  picture.  Look  at  the  consequences  in  the  reck 
less  adventure  of  the  madman  Brown  and  his  half  dozen  con 
federates.  Martial  law  became  the  order  of  the  day.  No  man 
could  go  outside  of  his  door,  without  giving  the  pass-word  to  the 
sentinel,  who  paced  along  the  adjoining  street.  Turn  your 
eyes  to  Texas,  and  behold  the  scenes  which  are  now  being 
enacted  there.  Look  in  the  direction  of  the  Southern  ports.  You 
find  them  closed  against  Northern  vessels,  except  on  condi 
tion  that  their  crews  shall  be  compelled  to  lie  in  jail;  and  when 
a  distinguished  citizen  of  Massachusetts  is  sent  to  South  Caro 
lina,  in  the  quality  of  an  ambassador,  to  remonstrate,  he  is 
invited  to  leave  the  State.  Remember  the  exile  of  Underwood 
from  Virginia,  and  the  expulsion  of  a  whole  body  of  quiet, 
unoffending  colonists  from  Kentucky.  Turn  to  the  laws  enacted 
in  Kansas  and  New  Mexico,  and  the  slave  codes  of  the  several 
States,  from  which  they  were  mainly  copied,  and  compare  them 
with  the  alien  and  sedition  laws,  against  which  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  so  loudly  protested.  And  then  cast  your  eyes  over 
the  whole  vast  field,  and  observe  the  general  terror — the  insecur 
ity — the  lynch  law — the  burning  at  the  stake — the  utter  inhu 
manity  and  barbarism  which  attend  it  every  where.  Why,  the 
chivalry  of  Virginia — brave  enough,  no  doubt,  if  they  were 
called  upon,  to  meet  an  open  foe — were  unsexed,  and  their  very 
knees  smote  together,  as  though  the  earth  were  yawning  beneath 
them,  at  the  bare  idea  of  an  uprising  amongst  their  slaves. 
Well  might  they  have  said  with  the  stout-hearted  tyrant,  when 
he  awoke  from  his  fearful  dream  on  Bosworth  Field: 

''Shadows  to-night  have  struck  more  terror  to  the  soul  of  Richard 
Than  could  the  substance  of  ten  thousand  soldiers." 

One  man  might  have  chased  a  thousand,  and  two  put  ten  thou 
sand  to  flight.  Who  would  be  willing  to  live  in  a  community  sur 
rounded  by  such  horrors?  \Vhat  would  be  its  capacity  to  resist 
a  foreign  invasion,  with  this  element  of  weakness  in  its  midst? 
The  war  of  the  Revolution  tells  the  story.  And  who  is  there  now 
to  lend  his  aid  to  its  extension,  or  to  say  that  we  are  not  inter 
ested  in  arresting  it?  If  the  Union  is  assailed,  is  it  not  a  part  of 
our  duty  to  defend  it?  If  the  slave  should  revolt  against  his 
master,  is  it  not  our  sons  and  brothers  that  must  go  up  to  his 
deliverance?  Is  it  not,  then,  our  right  and  our  duty  to  say, 


4l6  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  further,  and  here  shall  thy  proud 
waves  be  stayed?" 

The  whole  question  between  us  now  is  one  of  political  power. 
Our  Southern  brethren  are  of  the  opinion,  that  if  we  of  the 
Free  States  get  into  the  ascendant,  the  interests  of  slavery 
would  be  unsafe.  It  is  essential,  therefore,  in  their  view,  to 
their  peculiar  property,  that  the  reins  of  government  should  con 
tinue  in  their  hands.  This  cannot  be,  however,  without  yield 
ing  to  the  control  of  the  minority,  and  that  is  precisely  what  they 
have  enjoyed  through  their  representation  in  the  Senate,  and 
what  they  have  claimed  and  asserted  in  the  adoption  of  the  two- 
third  rule,  by  which  the  nomination  was  wrested  from  the  North 
ern  candidate,  who  complains  of  its  operation  precisely  when 
it  does  the  work  for  which  it  was  intended,  and  the  cup  of 
humiliation  is  carried  to  his  own  lips,  by  the  men  to  whom  the 
Democratic  majority  had  sacrificed  its  power.  It  is  a  confes 
sion,  however,  that  the  institution  of  slavery  is  not  reconcilable 
with  the  majority  principle,  and  is,  therefore,  necessarily  anti- 
republican.  To  save  their  power  then,  it  is  essential  that  they 
should  preserve  an  equality  in  the  Senate,  which  shall  neutralize 
the  numerical  majority  in  the  Free  States;  and  this  is  the  whole 
secret  of  the  struggle  in  relation  to  the  territories. 

By  what  right  is  it,  however,  that  they  seek  to  take  posses 
sion  of  them  ?  The  argument  is,  that  they  are  the  common  prop 
erty  of  the  Union,  and  that  they  are  as  well  authorized  to  carry 
their  property  there  as  we  are.  We  do  not  deny  this.  We  claim 
no  rights  in  the  territories  which  we  are  not  willing  to  accord 
to  them.  We  admit  that  we  have  no  more  authority  to  take  a 
slave  there  than  we  have  to  import  a  contagious  disease.  But 
we  do  insist  that  our  rights  there  are  equal  to  theirs,  and  that 
the  admission  of  the  slave  will  have  the  effect  of  excluding  the 
settlement  of  the  freeman ;  and  we  point  to  the  experience  of  all 
countries,  and  the  condition  of  the  Slave  States  in  particular, 
as  contrasted  with  our  own,  to  prove  it.  Why,  it  is  an  old 
story.  Five  hundred  years  ago,  the  Lords  of  Coucy  and  Cler- 
mont,  in  France,  following  the  general  example  of  the  time, 
emancipated  whole  villages  of  serfs,  for  the  express  reason, 
that  "for  hatred  of  such  servitude,"  the  stranger  declined  to 
settle  in  their  territories,  and  their  lands  remained  uncultivated 
and  unpeopled,  and  comparatively  worthless  to  themselves. 

We  do  not  admit  that  slaves  are  property  except  by  virtue  of 
the  local  law.  There  is  nothing  in  the  natural  law  to  warrant 
such  a  relation.  The  great  Declaration  proclaims  this  truth. 
The  Republican  platform  reiterates  it.  The  Democratic  plat 
form  is  silent,  because  the  interests  of  slavery  require  that  it 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS  IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      417 

should  be  ignored,  as  but  "a  glittering  generality,"  or  "a  fan 
faronade  of  nonsense."  The  Fathers  knew,  however,  what  they 
were  saying.  They  were  quite  as  wise  as  we  are.  The  sentiment 
was  nothing  new  to  them.  If  the  great  law  of  Christianity, 
promulgated  as  it  was  so  often  by  the  Roman  pontiffs  them 
selves,  did  not  settle  that  question,  the  voice  even  of  an  abso 
lute  king,  thundering  out  of  the  darkness  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  might  have  been  heard  proclaiming,  in  the  name  of  the 
law  of  Nature,  the  right  of  liberty  to  every  human  creature 
framed  in  the  image  of  God,  and  declaring  the  anxious  wish  that 
the  realm  of  France  might  become,  in  fact,  what  it  was  in  name — 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Free — (Le  Royaume  des  Francs).  When 
God  gave  dominion  to  man  over  all  created  things,  we  do  not 
find  that  he  invested  him  with  any  such  authority  over  his  fel 
lows.  No  contract  can  establish  it.  It  has  its  foundation  either 
in  force  or  fraud,  and  is  in  effect  no  more  than  the  law  of  the 
stronger.  If  it  is  good  as  to  the  black  man,  it  is  equally  so  as 
to  the  white.  And  this  was  the  idea  that  the  signers  of  the 
Declaration  and  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  obviously  enter 
tained.  There  is  no  doubt  that  slavery  has  existed  from  the 
earliest  times,  and  it  may  be  admitted  that  it  was  perhaps  a 
step  taken  in  the  direction  of  humanity,  when  it  came  to  be 
thought  that  a  better  use  might  be  made  of  adaptive  taken  in 
war  than  to  burn  him  at  the  stake — as  these  apostles  of  the  new 
humanity  are  said  to  deal  sometimes  with  their  own  negroes. 
However  originating,  our  Fathers  found  it  here,  when  they  were 
laying  the  foundations  of  our  Government.  When  they  refer 
to  it,  however,  it  is  only  as  the  creature  of  the  local  law.  The 
provision  in  the  Constitution,  which  is  supposed  to  recognize 
its  present  claims,  while  it  shrinks  from  the  utterance  of  the 
odious  word,  describes  the  slaves  as  "persons  held  to  service  or 
labor  in  one  State" — not  by  the  general  law,  but  "by  the  laws 
thereof/'  And  this,  too,  was  in  precise  accordance  with  the 
common  law,  as  settled  in  England,  and  always  recognized  here, 
until  the  decision  of  the  Dred  Scott  case.  To  insist,  however, 
that  what  is  property  by  the  law  of  a  State,  becomes  so  by  the 
law  of  the  Union,  and  is  entitled  to  protection  every  where,  is 
to  say  in  effect,  that  the  laws  of  every  State  may  be  transported 
into  the  territories,  and  engrafted  on  the  general  law.  Thus, 
because  dogs  are  property  here,  as  they  are  now  by  statute,  they 
are  property  every  where,  and  by  the  same  logic,  slavery  may 
be  imported  into  Pennsylvania,  and  exist  here  in  spite  of  us. 
Our  ancestors,  or  rather  the  Southern  States  themselves, 
thought  that  it  required  a  constitutional  provision  to  secure  the 


4l8  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

right  of  recaption,  even  in  the  case  of  an  escape — a  thing  which 
was  not  dreamed  of  in  regard  to  any  other  chattel — and  they 
inserted  it  in  this  form. 

Taking  their  own  language,  therefore,  and  the  fact  of  its 
supposed  necessity,  as  the  guide,  it  is  by  the  law  of  the  State 
only  that  this  relation  can  exist.  While  there  is  nothing  in 
that  instrument  to  make  it  the  law  of  the  nation,  the  implication 
is  precisely  in  the  opposite  direction.  If  it  is  not  made  so,  how 
ever,  by  the  Constitution,  it  is  clear  that  it  cannot  be  made  so 
by  the  authority  of  Congress.  Assuming  it  to  be  true,  as 
announced  in  the  first  article  of  the  Democratic  platform,  that 
the  construction  of  this  instrument  is  to  be  a  strict  one,  and 
that  no  doubtful  power  is  ever  to  be  exercised,  or — as  General 
Foster  has  just  asserted  in  his  Philadelphia  speech — that  where 
there  is  no  express  grant  of  power,  there  is  no  right  to  legis 
late  at  all,  it  would  be  curious  to  know  where  the  authority  is  to 
be  found  on  the  part  of  that  body  to  alter  the  common  law, 
and  to  depart  from  the  declared  purpose  of  the  instrument — 
which  is  "to  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty" — by  nationalizing 
slavery.  If  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  can  do  this,  it 
can  do  any  thing.  Those  who  insist  that  it  may,  and  yet  pro 
fess  to  adhere  on  all  occasions  to  the  letter,  are  but  cheats  and 
impostors,  unless  they  choose  to  take  refuge  in  the  idea,  that  they 
are  "to  be  pardoned  their  bad  hearts  for  their  worse  brains." 
The  argument  admits,  however,  in  effect,  that  it  cannot  be 
legislated  in. 

The  idea  of. one  branch  of  the  Democracy,  however,  is  that 
the  Constitution  itself  has  done  this  work — that  it  has  adopted 
human  slavery  as  the  general  law  of  this  confederacy,  with 
freedom  only  as  the  exception — and  that  it  carries  it  proprio 
vigore,  by  its  own '  inherent  force,  to  the  very  limits  of  our 
dominions,  and  wherever  our  flag  is  found  to  wave.  This  is  the 
view  of  a  Democratic  President,  as  embodied  in  the  declara 
tion  that  Kansas  was  already  as  much  a  slave  territory  as  Geor 
gia,  and  this  is  the  new  doctrine  propounded  for  the  occasion 
by  a  slaveholding  judiciary.  If  there  is  any  difference  in  the 
opinion  of  the  arch  agitator,  Douglas,  and  his  retainers,  I  am 
at  a  loss  to  discover  what  it  is.  I  do  not  think,  at  all  events, 
that  there  is  enough  to  quarrel  about.  I  confess  that  I  am 
bewildered  and  befogged  in  the  labyrinthine  contradictions  of 
his  political  metaphysics.  He  reminds  me,  as  he  pilgrimizes 
on  his  pious  errand  throughout  the  country,  discoursing  on  this 
theme,  of  the  fallen  spirits  of  Milton,  who  sat  upon  a  hill 
apart,  and 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      419 

"reasoned  high 

Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate — 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end  in  wandering  mazes  lost." 

I  do  not  profess  to  be  very  sharp,  but  if  there  is  any  thing 
left  of  his  doctrine  of  popular  sovereignty,  it  has  faded  out,  in 
my  view,  to  the  tenuity  of  one  of  Ossian's  ghosts,  looming  up 
in  the  midst,  with  the  stars  twinkling  through  its  sides,  it  has 
tapered  down,  I  believe,  into  non-intervention  by  Congress,  a 
doctrine  expressly  repudiated  by  the  Baltimore  Convention  of 
1848,  by  a  vote  of  246  to  36,  when  it  was  proposed  by  the  vol 
canic  Yancey,  who  is  now  belching  smoke  and  flame,  and 
threatened  to  smash  up  the  national  machine,  "and  break  things 
generally."  That  is  now  the  unvarying  refrain — the  everlasting 
burden  of  his  song.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  the  whole 
logic  of  the  case  is  with  his  antagonist.  When  he  admits  that 
the  question  is  a  judicial  one,  and  declares  his  acquiescence  in 
the  doctrines  of  the  court — as  he  does  in  that  delicate  piece  of 
joinery,  which  was  dove-tailed  into  his  platform,  or  perhaps 
rather  superadded,  like  the  tail  to  a  boy's  kite,  to  steady  its 
motion  and  help  it  in  its  ascent — by  the  cunning  hand  of 
Wickliffe — not  him,  by  any  means,  who  first  tried  his  hand  on 
the  Saxon  Bible — he  surrenders  the  whole  question,  and  goes 
over  to  Breckinridge,  and  they  both  go  down  together.  The 
court  has  already  decided  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  carries  slavery  into  the  territories;  that  Congress 
cannot  exclude  it;  that  it  cannot  confer  on  the  territorial 
government  a  power  which  it  cannot  exercise  itself;  and  that 
the  territorial  governments  cannot,  of  course,  meddle  with  it 
themselves.  If  all  this  be  true,  the  obligation  to  intervene,  if 
necessary,  for  its  protection,  follows  as  irresistibly  from  the 
premises,  as  the  re-opening  of  the  slave-trade  is  sure  to  tread 
upon  the  heels  of  the  doctrine  that  slavery  is  national,  and 
liberal  and  just.  If  it  be  true,  however,  that  he  has  kicked  down 
the  Wickliffe  plank,  in  his  late  speech  at  Clifton  Springs,  he  is 
now,  as  the  lawyers  say,  in  nubibus — suspended  in  mid-air,  like 
many  an  unfortunate  wight  before  him,  without  any  platform  at 
all,  upon  the  doctrine  that  the  territories  are  without  a  master, 
and  are  law  unto  themselves,  whether  the  Supreme  Court  decide 
one  way  or  the  other.  And  this  is  squatter  sovereignty,  in 
excelsis,  although  he  has  come  to  dislike  the  word. 

The  doctrine  of  squatter  sovereignty,  a  recent  invention, 
attributed  to  the  genius  of  Cass,  and  first  ventilated,  I  believe, 
in  the  famous  Nicholson  letter — equally  unpalatable  to  the 
Southern  Democrats  as  to  ourselves — so  far  as  it  conveys  the 


42O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

idea  of  the  right  of  a  people  to  regulate  their  own  institutions, 
domestic  or  otherwise,  is  not  to  be  questioned  by  any  body., 
The  fact,  however,  that  the  territories  are  the  property  of  the 
Union,  and  that  the  question  is,  whether  they  are  to  come  into 
the  general  partnership  as  States,  presents  a  very  different  issue. 
Admitting  the  right  to  acquire  them  by  either  cession  or  con 
quest,  the  Government  stands,  of  course,  in  the  relation  of  a 
proprietor,  with  all  the  usual  incidents  of  ownership,  and  sub 
ject  even  to  the  right  of  re-sale  as  one  of  those  incidents.  If 
the  Democratic  party  is  right,  however,  in  its  principle  of  strict 
construction,  we  have  no  valid  title  at  all,  because  there  is 
nothing  whatever  in  the  Constitution  to  authorize  the  acquisition, 
as  was  admitted  in  the  cases  of  Louisiana  and  Florida.  In  that 
case,  there  is  an  end,  of  course,  of  the  whole  question;  the 
domain  and  empire  become  alike  derelict,  and  squatter  sover 
eignty  must  reign  supreme.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
wrong — and  the  assertion  of  title  admits  it — then  the  power  to 
make  all  needful  rules  and  regulations  in  respect  to  it,  is  denied 
to  the  lawful  proprietor,  in  the  face  of  a  clear  constitutional  pro 
vision,  and  the  well-settled  law  in  regard  to  ceded  or  conquered 
territory ;  and  the  settler,  either  with  or  without  title,  may  estab 
lish  just  such  form  of  government  as  he  thinks  proper.  The 
answer  to  this  is,  that  the  rights  of  the  proprietor,  though  gener 
ally  absolute,  must  be  exercised  in  this  case  within  the  limits  of 
the  Constitution.  That  instrument,  however,  is  assumed  to  be 
entirely  silent  in  regard  to  it,  and  to  contain  nothing  to  authorize 
any  legislation  on  the  subject  at  all,  while  it  is  not  questioned 
that  Congress  may  and  does  exercise  the  law-making  power, 
and  authorize  the  appointment  of  executive  and  judicial  officers, 
without  reference  to  the  supposed  rights,  or  wishes,  or  opinions, 
of  any  or  all  of  the  sovereigns,  who  may  have  emigrated  from 
other  States  into  the  common  territory.  It  is  not  intended,  how 
ever,  by  this  argument,  that  the  settler  shall  do  just  as  he  pleases, 
even  in  regard  to  what  are  called  pre-eminently  the  domes 
tic  relations.  The  practical  notion  is,  that  he  is  a  sovereign 
only  for  the  purpose  of  legalizing  slavery.  When  the  people  of 
Kansas  decided  in  favor  of  a  free  constitution,  it  was  found  that 
they  could  not  be  admitted,  even  though  they  counted  nearly  a 
hundred  thousand  souls.  With  slavery,  they  might  have  come 
in  at  any  time,  and  pocketed  a  bonus  for  doing  so.  When  Brig- 
ham  Young  and  his  followers,  however,  by  a  logic  that  was 
unanswerable,  undertook  to  carry  out  this  doctrine,  and  to  pro 
vide  help-mates  for  the  saints,  by  the  adoption  of  the  fairer  of 
the  "twin  relics  of  barbarism,"  it  did  not  seem  quite  so  clear, 
and  the  saints  of  the  Douglas  congregation  allowed  their  piety 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS  IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      421 

for  once  to  overrule  their  politics,  and  voted  in  favor  of  inter 
vention  to  destroy. 

But  this  question  has  another  aspect,  which  seems  to  have 
been  overlooked  in  all  the  discussions  upon  it.  It  seems  to 
be  agreed  on  all  hands,  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  Constitu 
tion  to  authorize  directly  the  acquisition  of  new  territory,  and 
that,  of  course,  the  provision  in  regard  to  public  lands,  as  well 
as  that  which  relates  to  the  admission  of  new  States,  has  ref 
erence  exclusively  to  the  then  existing  territories,  and  not  to 
any  others  which  might  be  subsequently  acquired.  The  Demo 
cratic  rule  of  strict  construction,  applied  to  this  case,  involves, 
of  necessity,  an  entire  denial  of  all  these  rights.  It  follows, 
therefore,  that  there  is  no  right  on  the  part  of  the  people  of 
these  territories  to  come  in  at  all  as  States,  and  certainly  none  to 
come  in  on  any  other  terms  than  such  as  the  Government  in 
its  discretion  may  think  proper  to  impose.  In  any  view,  more 
over,  the  power  to  acquire  is  merely  an  implied  and  incidental 
one.  When,  we  come,  however,  to  the  question  of  admission, 
there  are  other  considerations  which  enter  into  it.  Shall  they  be 
permitted  to  come  in  as  Slave  States?  If  they  do,  they  bring 
with  them  a  representation  on  the  basis  of  property.  That  is  an 
anomalous  feature,  involving  in  the  preference  which  it  gives  to 
a  peculiar  species  of  property,  which  the  common  law  does  not 
recognize  at  all,  over  that  which  is  property  by  the  universal  law, 
a  gross  inequality  of  privileges  between  the  States.  So  far  as  it 
regards  the  old  States,  or,  if  you  choose,  the  old  territories,  it  is 
our  bargain,  and  although  a  hard  one,  looking  to  the  circum 
stances  under  which  it  was  made,  and  the  advantages  which  we 
have  realized  from  it,  we  are  willing  to  stand  up  to  it,  and  to 
shame  the  violators  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  by  a  faith  that 
has  not  been  observed  in  regard  to  ourselves.  When  we  are 
asked,  however,  to  go  not  merely  beyond  the  letter,  but  beyond 
the  very  spirit  of  the  contract,  by  extending,  in  favor  of  after 
acquired  property,  a  privilege  which  is  against  common  right, 
because  it  is  in  derogation  of  the  great  fundamental  Republican 
rule  of  equality,  we  may  well  answer — "non  in  h<zc  fcedera 
venimus" — we  made  no  such  bargain.  While  we  do  not,  like  our 
Democratic  friends,  insist  upon  the  letter,  in  the  construction  of 
the  fundamental  law  of  a  State,  as  we  would  in  that  of  a  penal 
statute,  because  we  know  that  "the  letter  kills,"  we  do  insist 
that  the  instrument  is  to  be  construed  with  reference  to  the  terri 
tories  then  owned,  and  that  it  is  a  rule  of  common  sense,  as  well 
as  of  the  common  law,  that  no  provision  in  a  contract,  which 
derogates  from  natural  right — and  equality  in  such  right — is  ever 
to  be  extended  by  construction.  Because  we  chose  to  accord 


422  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  right  of  representation  to  an  old  partner,  upon  a  considera 
tion  which  has  never  been  exacted  by  us  in  the  imposition  of 
direct  taxes,  and  has,  of  course,  thus  far  practically  failed,  it 
does  not  follow  that  we  are  to  admit  all  creation  to  the  same 
privileges,  and  that,  too,  upon  the  vote  of  a  bare  majority  of 
States.  Strictly  speaking,  the  admission  of  a  new  State  outside 
of  the  Constitution,  if  consistent  at  all  with  the  idea  of  a  Gov 
ernment  limited  like  ours,  is  an  act  of  sovereignty,  which  ought 
to  have  the  consent  of  all,  precisely  as  the  admission  of  a  new 
partner  into  a  mercantile  firm.  The  practice  has  settled  it  other 
wise,  in  analogy  to  the  constitutional  provision,  but  no  practice 
can  incorporate  a  principle  which  interferes  with  our  rights,  or 
our  equality  as  a  State.  And  these  are  doctrines  that  no  man  who 
stands  upon  either  of  the  Democratic  platforms,  can  with  any 
show  of  consistency  controvert.  If  their  notions  are  sound,  there 
is  nothing  clearer  than  the  postulate,  that  there  is  no  other  condi 
tion  on  the  part  of  the  territories  in  their  provincial  state  than 
that  of  entire  dependence  upon  the  will  of  their  proprietor,  and 
the  right  to  govern  them  by  the  law-making  power  of  the  parent 
State  is  as  unquestionable  as  the  right  to  dispose  of  the  land 
itself.  If  the  condition  of  wardship  and  tutelage  should  happen 
in  any  case  to  be  perpetuated  by  the  persistent  refusal  of  the 
people  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  or  to  come  into  the  Union 
at  all,  it  would  make  a  curious  problem  for  the  Supreme  Court 
and  the  political  philosophers  of  the  Democratic  school. 

Nor  is  it  any  answer  to  say,  that  we  are  free  to  exercise  the 
same  privileges  by  the  re-establishment  of  slavery  amongst  us, 
or  that  the  black  man  is  reckoned  as  a  unit  in  the  apportionment 
of  the  representation,  while  he  is  counted  only  as  a  fraction  in 
the  Slave  States.  The  necessities  of  our  social  condition,  a 
proper  respect  for  the  right  of  others,  and  an  intelligent  sense  of 
our  own  interest,  absolutely  forbid  the  return  to  a  system  which 
degrades  the  white  man,  and  impoverishes  and  weakens  the 
State.  If  we  do  count  the  negro  as  a  unit,  when  he  is  free,  we 
enjoy  no  advantage  in  that  particular  over  our  brethren  of  the 
South.  It  is  a  representation  on  both  sides  on  the  basis  of  men. 
When  it  comes  to  the  slave,  it  is  a  representation  of  property 
only.  Though  nominally  persons,  with  a  representation  as  such, 
they  are  substantially  things,  because  they  have  no  will  of  their 
own.  If  their  emancipation  should  raise  them  to  the  political 
value  of  an  integer,  it  would  be  accomplished  by  reconverting 
them  into  men,  with  a  will  of  their  own,  and  a  disposition  per 
haps  to  travel  northward,  and  add  still  more  to  the  ever  increas 
ing  preponderance  of  our  federal  numbers.  It  is  not  admitted  by 
the  South,  and  is  denied  by  the  Supreme  Court,  that  they  are 


A   NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      423 

citizens,  whether  bond  or  free,  although  it  has  been  generally 
supposed  that  the  right  of  representation  enjoyed  by  both  of 
them  implies  it,  and  it  seems  difficult  to  understand  how  a  man 
is  to  be  represented  without  being  a  citizen,  or  how  it  is  that 
those  who  have  no  less  than  twenty-one  representatives  in  Con 
gress,  should  have  no  standing  in  the  Federal  courts  as  citizens. 
If  there  be  any  conclusive  test,  it  would  seem  to  be  this,  and  yet 
they  deny  the  title  with  their  usual  logic,  even  to  the  freeman, 
who  is  treated  as  a  whole  man  in  adjusting  the  representation  on 
the  basis  of  numbers. 

And  this  leads  me  to  speak  of  the  decision  of  the  Supreme 
Court  upon  this  question,  which,  as  Mr.  Douglas  thinks — or  did 
at  least  before  his  speech  at  Clifton  Springs — no  honest  man 
can  dispute.  I  am  free  to  say,  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  carry 
their  respect  for  the  judiciary  so  far  as  to  hold  myself  concluded 
by  any  opinion  of  theirs  upon  a  question  of  state,  or  one  which 
involves  the  liberties  of  a  people.  There  is  nothing  in  the  Con 
stitution  itself  to  invest  them  with  any  such  power.  It  has  never 
been  the  usage  even  in  England,  where  the  rights  of  the  people 
are  dependent  on  ancient  charters,  and  acts  of  Parliament,  and  the 
unwritten  customs  of  the  realm,  to  acquiesce  in  any  decision  that 
was  felt  to  traverse  the  popular  instincts,  or  to  disturb  any  of  the 
old  maxims  or  landmarks  of  liberty.  If  they  had  yielded  on  such 
occasions,  they  would  have  been  slaves  now,  and  so  would  we. 
The  experience  of  that  people  had  demonstrated  that  judges 
were  no  further  to  be  trusted  than  other  men,  and  that  in  all  the 
struggles  between  prerogative  and  privilege,  they  had  been  inva 
riably  the  supplest  and  most  tractable  of  all  the  instruments  of 
tyranny.  The  lesson  was  not  lost  upon  the  statesmen  of  the 
Revolutionary  era.  The  danger  of  intrusting  the  public  liberties 
to  a  guardianship  so  practically  irresponsible,  was  felt  and 
pointed  out  by  the  sagacious  Jefferson  in  the  Declaration,  that  to 
commit  a  power  so  great  to  any  seven  or  nine  men,  perhaps  no 
wiser  and  no  better  than  ourselves,  would  be  to  make  them  the 
absolute  masters  of  the  State,  and  to  erect  the  Government  into 
a  judicial  oligarchy.  The  same  doctrine,  overlaid  by  the  rever 
ence  inspired  by  the  high  character,  the  eminent  patriotism,  and 
the  distinguished  learning  of  such  men  as  John  Marshall  and  his 
associates — was  reiterated  by  Jackson  in  a  case  involving  an 
economical  question  only,  was  indorsed  by  Buchanan  as  a  Sena 
tor  in  the  same  case,  and  is  now  canonized  as  an  article  of  Demo 
cratic  faith  in  the  Cincinnati  platform.  The  decision  in  the 
Dred  Scott  case,  with  others  which  have  touched  not  only  the 
anomalous  property  in  slaves,  but  all  property  whatever,  has 
made  it  the  sentiment  of  all  parties  in  the  nation.  There  was 


424  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

something  providential,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  the  time  and  manner 
of  its  occurrence.  It  was  a  decision  volunteered  by  slaveholding 
judges,  and  foreshadowed  by  the  President  in  the  very  crisis  of 
the  Kansas  struggle,  with  the  obvious  purpose  of  casting  the 
balance  against  the  Free  States.  It  was  judicial  intervention, 
following  upon  the  heels  of  executive  intervention,  to  secure 
legislative  intervention,  and  approved  even  by  those  who  profess 
to  be  opposed  to  any  intervention  at  all.  It  has  awakened  the 
nation  to  a  full  sense  of  the  wisdom  of  Jefferson,  and  the  reason 
ableness  of  that  jealousy  which  was  once  condemned  as  inordi 
nate.  I  should  be  glad  to  examine  it,  if  the  time  would  allow 
me.  I  dismiss  it,  however,  to  the  owls  and  the  bats,  to  that 
oblivion  which  is  sure  to  overtake  it.  It  has  failed  to  do  the 
work  for  which  it  was  intended,  and  will  soon  die  out,  leaving 
behind  it  only  the  valuable  lesson  which  it  has  taught  us. 

And  yet  humbly  as  the  negro  is  rated  in  this  Government, 
we  are  told  that  although  we  meet  him  at  every  corner,  we 
must  not  agitate,  if  he  insists  on  taking  the  wall,  but  must  lift 
our  hats  respectfully,  and  pass  by  quietly  on  the  other  side.  On 
terms  of  unconditional  submission,  we  can  have  peace — so  can 
anybody  in  the  worst  of  governments — but  not  otherwise.  If 
we  petition,  we  are  insulted;  if  we  remonstrate,  we  are  taxed 
with  insubordination;  if  we  assert  the  right  to  rule,  because  we 
are  the  majority,  we  are  threatened  with  a  secession. 

Well,  we  have  endeavored  to  be  quiet,  and  for  the  sake  of 
peace,  have  borne  and  forborne  for  a  very  long  time,  but  we 
cannot  exorcise  this  juggling  fiend,  or  bid  this  unquiet  spirit 
down,  by  putting  a  padlock  upon  our  lips.  Turn  your  eyes  to 
the  last  session  of  Congress.  The  Republican  members  adopted, 
as  you  know,  the  policy  of  almost  unbroken  silence,  but  what 
a  storm  of  vituperation  was  poured  upon  their  heads !  For  six 
long  weeks  the  thunder  bellowed,  and  the  lightning  flashed 
around  that  hall,  but  there  they  sat  like  "Patience  on  a  monu 
ment,"  without  reply,  until  the  tempest  had  spent  its  fury  and 
growled  itself  to  rest.  Nor  did  the  Democrats  or  the  Union 
savers  of  the  North  themselves  escape  the  dire  anathema.  The 
former,  or  perhaps  more  properly  the  anti-Lecompton  portion  of 
them,  were  but  a  shade  paler  than  the  Black  Republicans  them 
selves.  The  latter — there  was  no  quarter  for  them — were  but 
the  veriest  Swiss,  who  wanted  to  secure  the  custom  of  the 
South,  and  were  willing  to  pawn  their  principles  and  dishonor 
their  fathers,  if  necessary,  for  the  merest  dross.  And  the  same 
spirit  transmigrated  into  the  Charleston  Convention,  and  blew 
the  whole  concern  to  atoms. 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      425 

And  now  as  to  the  risks  of  a  secession;  This  has  been  often 
talked  about  of  late,  and  has,  on  earlier  occasions,  been  treated 
by  such  men  as  Clay  and  Webster  as  something  serious.  If 
it  be  so,  the  sooner  we  know  it  the  better.  With  all  proper 
respect,  however,  for  the  sagacity  of  those  distinguished  patriots, 
I  am  constrained  to  say,  that  I  have  never  been  able  to  listen, 
with  any  measure  of  patience,  to  threats  of  this  sort.  I  have 
never  entertained  a  fear  in  regard  to  the  Union  of  these  States, 
and  would  treat  the  very  imagination  of  a  dissolution  as  the 
highest  of  treasons,  if  I  did  not  regard  it  is  the  wildest  of 
chimeras.  The  man  who  thinks  that  these  States,  which  have 
been  joined  in  holy  matrimony  by  a  bond  of  liberty,  are  to  be 
ruptured  and  divorced  upon  a  question  like  this,  is,  I  think, 
no  statesman,  and  has  a  very  imperfect  understanding  of  the  ties 
which  hold  us  together.  If  he  supposes  that  it  is  only  a  paper 
Constitution,  which  may  be  one  thing  to-day  and  another  to-mor 
row,  according  to  the  mere  shifting  will  of  a  bench  of  nine 
Federal  judges — he  is  greatly  mistaken.  That  would  be  but  a 
rope  of  sand.  No.  It  is  the  community  of  interest  and  of  origin 
— the  means  of  intercommunication — the  family  tie — a  common 
history — the  sense  of  a  common  struggle — and  above  all,  the 
intense,  overpowering  sentiment  of  nationality  which  follows 
our  flag  every  where,  which  travels  as  we  travel,  and  away 
beyond  the  seas,  amid  the  tumbling  icebergs  of  the  Arctic 
ocean,  and  down  under  the  burning  line,  is  ever  present  in  the 
American  heart,  flinging  off  in  the  dim  distance  all  recollec 
tion  of  State  lines,  and  comprehending  in  one  affectionate 
embrace  the  whole  vast  circle,  the  almost  limitless  expanse, 
that  proclaims  the  present  and  prospective  power  of  the  great 
American  Republic,  the  queen  among  the  nations,  "our  own, 
our  native  land" — these,  these  are  the  threads,  light  and  delicate 
as  the  gossamer,  but  strong  as  cables  of  adamant,  that  anchor 
us  by  the  rock  where  our  Fathers  left  us,  and  guarantee  our 
lasting  unity  as  a  people.  Why,  the  rustle  of  the  star-spangled 
banner,  or  a  quaver  of  Yankee  Doodle,  would  disperse  a  whole 
legion  of  secessionists. 

But  if  the  exercise  of  a  constitutional  power  in  the  resump 
tion  of  the  long  abdicated  rule  of  the  majority,  and  the  election 
of  a  candidate  who  is  not  agreeable  to  the  slave  owner,  are  to 
result  in  a  convulsion  of  this  sort,  it  is  high  time  that  the 
experiment  were  made,  and  the  conservative  powers  of  this 
Government  put  to  the  proof.  If  it  cannot  survive  the  shock  of 
a  change  of  dynasty  like  this,  it  is  hardly  worth  saving.  The 
idea  that  it  can  be  overthrown  in  this  way,  is  one  which  will 
be  only  strengthened  and  confirmed  by  the  maintenance  of  the 


426  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

present  order  of  things.  The  time  to  settle  that  question,  if  it 
is  to  be  settled  at  all,  is  now.  The  insolent  menaces  of  the 
Southern  leaders  amount  to  a  challenge,  which  we  cannot 
decline,  without  a  confession  of  our  weakness  or  our  fear,  which 
will  only  aggravate  the  evil  hereafter.  It  is  our  duty  to  defeat 
them  now,  if  it  were  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  teach  them 
modesty,  and  to  show  the  world  how  utterly  hollow  and  ridicu 
lous  is  all  this  clamor,  which  has  shaken  the  nerves  of  the 
\veak  and  impaired  the  confidence  of  the  ignorant,  in  the  stability 
of  this  Government.  It  is  the  sovereign  remedy,  and  the  only 
one,  for  all  this  agitation,  which  it  is  thought  so  desirable  to 
repress.  To  suppose  that  it  will  go  down  by  a  new  submission, 
or  upon  a  new  covenant  of  peace,  in  view  of  our  past  experience 
of  the  exactions  and  the  perfidy  of  the  slave  power,  is  about  as 
reasonable  as  to  expect  that  the  strong  man  shall  not  struggle 
while  the  night-mare  sits  upon  his  chest,  smothering  his  respira 
tion,  and  damming  up  the  very  currents  of  his  life. 

All  these  threats,  however,  are  but  an  insidious  appeal  to 
our  affections  or  our  interests.  They  involve  one  argument 
for  the  generous  and  the  patriotic,  and  another  for  the  mean 
and  the  sordid.  They  suppose  among  us  either  a  love  for  the 
Union  of  these  States  as  strong  as  the  affection  of  the  mother, 
and  with  a  little  of  her  weakness,  too,  or  a  base  and  ignoble 
spirit,  which  would  sacrifice  every  thing,  even  to  self-respect 
itself,  upon  the  altar  of  Mammon — "the  least  erect  spirit  that 
fell."  They  find  both  classes,  unfortunately,  amongst  us.  For 
the  first,  we  can  respect  the  motive,  while  we  deplore  the  weak 
ness.  For  the  second,  there  can  be  no  feeling  but  the  deepest 
scorn  and  the  most  unmitigated  contempt.  The  man  who  has 
no  sense  but  of  his  pecuniary  interests — who  is  ready  to  make 
merchandise  of  his  principles  and  independence,  and  is  silly 
enough  to  be  alarmed.  At  the  threats  of  non-intercourse  and  loss 
of  trade — it  would  be  base  flattery  to  call  such  a  creature  a  man, 
Does  any  one  suppose  that  the  cotton  planter  comes  here,  and 
deals  with  us  upon  the  principle  of  personal  affection,  and  from  a 
disinterested  desire  to  favor  us?  He  forgets  that  trade  has  its 
laws,  which  are  as  regular  in  their  operation  as  those  of  physics. 
The  slaveholder  will  go  precisely  wherever  his  interests  or  neces 
sities  lead  him.  He  is  as  dependent  as  any  body.  He  must  buy 
his  bread,  his  horses  and  mules,  and  his  implements  of  husbandry, 
from  the  North.  He  must  come  to  the  Northern  cities,  to  realize 
the  product  of  his  crops,  and  to  find  carriers  for  them.  He 
wants  advances,  or  in  other  words  credit,  and  he  can  only  find  it 
there.  He  must  go  there  to  purchase  the  silks,  the  jewelry,  the 
pianos,  the  fine  carriages,  the  expensive  furniture,  all  the  luxuries 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      427 

— nay  even  the  necessities  of  civilized  life,  which  surround  and 
embellish  his  home.  He  must  go  there,  too,  to  parade  the  beauty 
of  his  daughters,  and  the  magnificence  of  their  attire,  as  well  as 
to  recruit  his  own  shattered  frame,  at  some  fashionable  watering 
place,  where  he  can  purge  off  the  miasma  of  the  rice  field,  by 
inhaling  the  pure  and  health-giving  breezes  of  our  more  favored 
clime.  He  cannot  make  any  of  these  articles  at  home.  There  is 
no  skill,  no  machinery,  no  commercial  activity,  no  marts  of  trade, 
no  great  cities,  where  slavery  flaps  its  heavy  wing  over  the  soil. 
The  very  genius  of  that  institution  forbids  it.  He  cannot  even 
educate  his  sons  to  manhood,  without  sending  them  to  a  Northern 
university.  To  refuse  all  connection  with  us,  and  to  decline  the 
indulgences  which  it  supplies,  would  be  to  take  a  long  stride 
backward  in  the  direction  of  barbarism.  If  the  Union  were 
divided  to-morrow,  and  peace  could  be  maintained  between  us, 
there  would  be  precisely  the  same  relations  of  connection  and 
dependence  as  now.  The  North  would  carry  and  sell  their  cot 
ton,  purchase  their  bills,  provide  them  with  their  bread,  and 
educate  their  children.  There  can  be  no  commerce  where  trade 
is  made  a  question  of  color,  where  its  free  wings  are  clipped  by 
police  regulations,  and  where  sailors  have  to  be  thrown  into  jail, 
because  their  skins  happen  to  be  a  little  darker  than  ours.  There 
can  be  no  universities  where  there  is  an  embargo  on  speech  and 
even  thought — no  education  where  books  are  burned  in  the 
market  places  by  the  common  hangman,  and  professors  are 
exiled  for  daring  to  be  men.  The  merchants  of  the  North,  who 
advertise  opinions  for  the  Southern  market,  and  cringe,  with  the 
suppleness  of  the  Asiatic  eunuch,  to  these  cotton  lords,  are  not 
only  derided  for  their  folly,  but  despised  for  their  servility. 
There  is  not  a  high-spirited  Southern  maiden,  fitted  to  be  the 
mother  of  a  race  of  freemen — and  there  are  many  such — who 
would  not  scorn  to  mate  herself  with  a  creature  so  abject  as  the 
man  who  would  endeavor  to  recommend  himself  by  artifices  such 
as  these.  It  is  the  North  that  produces  the  vigorous  progeny 
that  takes  the  lead  in  every  department  of  industry,  even  in  the 
Southern  States.  I  have  heard  Mr.  Douglas  himself  remark, 
that  in  every  leading  city  of  the  country,  its  supplies  of  intellect 
and  enterprise  were  drawn  from  the  regions  North  of  it.  It  is 
not,  however,  from  such  a  degenerate  stock  as  this  that  any 
thing  manly  is  to  be  propagated.  It  is  only  the  man  who  will 
respect  himself  that  will  be  respected  by  others,  and  it  is  only 
with  such  a  man  that  a  truly  elevated  Southern  gentleman  would 
choose  to  deal.  He  sees  slaves  enough  at  home.  His  confidence 
is  only  for  freemen. 


428  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

But  what  is  to  be  gained  by  secession?  Secession  is  revolu 
tion.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  quiet  separation.  The  Union 
is  something  more  than  a  confederacy,  which  will  divide  by  its 
line  of  cleavage,  like  a  stratified  rock  or  a  lump  of  stone  coal. 
If  it  be  rent  asunder,  it  will  be  by  a  blow  like  that  which  shat 
ters  the  granite  rock.  Is  it  to  advance  the  interests  of  the  slave 
owner  that  this  thing  is  to  be  done  ?  Why,  Wendell  Phillips  and 
his  party  are  better  logicians  than  this.  They  look  upon  secession 
as  the  direct  highway  which  leads  to  the  utter  extinction  of 
slavery.  And  they  are  unquestionably  right.  The  lapse  of  two 
years  would  not  see  a  Slave  State  upon  our  Southern  border.  As 
the  chasm  widened  and  deepened,  the  black  cloud,  whose  edges 
are  now  fringed  with  flame,  would  roll  back  upon  the  Gulf,  to 
accumulate  its  horrors,  and  concentrate  and  intensify  its  aggra 
vated  thunders  there.  And  the  process  would  go  on,  until  the 
Border  States,  unwilling  as  they  would  be  to  bear  the  burthens, 
and  encounter  the  dangers  of  that  institution,  would  wheel  round 
into  line  with  us  again,  section  by  section,  and  tier  after  tier,  as 
they  respectively  became  free.  The  ingenious  expedient  of  the 
western  farmer,  who  proposed  to  save  his  corn  from  the  depre 
dations  of  the  vermin,  by  planting  no  border  row  at  all,  would  be 
about  the  only  feasible  provision  against  a  general  stampede. 

All  this,  however,  supposes  that  the  separation  is  a  peaceful 
one — as  it  cannot  be.  It  would  be  more  or  less  violent;  and 
what  are  their  means  of  defense,  with  an  army  of  freemen  in 
front,  and  a  savage,  relentless,  unpitying  foe,  stung  to  madness 
by  oppression — with  a  long  arrear  of  injuries  to  wipe  out,  and 
freedom,  God's  best  gift,  before  him — in  their  dwellings,  at  their 
firesides,  and  hanging  menacingly  upon  their  rear?  The  thing 
is  not  to  be  talked  of  by  sane  men.  They  would  prove  inade 
quate  to  defend  themselves  from  the  knife,  and  the  torch,  and 
the  poison  in  the  hands  of  their  own  slaves,  and  would  come 
back,  like  the  prodigal  son,  to  beg  re-admission  under  the 
paternal  roof.  And  yet,  with  all  these  elements  of  weakness  in 
their  midst,  and  a  white  population  impoverished  and  degraded 
by  the  contact,  they  presume  to  threaten  us,  with  all  our 
material  and  moral  power — our  great  resources  in  men  and 
money — our  universal  freedom — and  our  unrivaled  means  of 
concentration !  Do  they  hope  to  enlist  others  in  this  struggle  ? 
They  have  more  than  once  insinuated  as  much.  If  they  could 
succeed,  however,  in  securing  the  support  or  sympathy  of  any 
portion  of  the  civilized  world,  in  such  a  cause,  and  upon  such 
an  issue  as  this,  what  is  to  be  the  return  which  they  are  to  make 
for  it?  Are  they  to  sink  again  into  a  condition  of  worse  than 
colonial  dependence  upon  the  monarchical  governments  of  the 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      429 

Old  World?  Do  they  prefer  the  condition  of  subject  provinces 
to  that  of  independent  States?  If  they  do,  it  is  more,  however, 
than  we  can  suffer.  We  cannot  permit  any  European  power 
to  hold  colonies  here,  located  as  they  are.  We  shall  be  con 
strained  to  borrow  for  the  occasion  the  Monroe  doctrine  of 
"no  foreign  intervention  here,"  from  the  Democratic  platform 
itself.  If  our  Southern  brethren  are  not  content  to  live  in  peace 
and  harmony,  under  the  broad  shadow  of  our  national  flag,  they 
must  go  somewhere  else.  The  land  is  ours.  We  cannot  afford 
to  part  with  an  acre  of  it.  We  have  an  interest  in  its  battle 
fields.  Eutaw,  and  Camden,  and  Guilford  Court  House,  are  his 
toric  names.  The  blood  of  our  ancestors  has  mingled  with  theic 
soil.  It  was  at  Yorktown  that  the  curtain  fell  upon  the  drama 
which  opened  at  Lexington,  and  Concord,  and  Bunker  Hill.  The 
bones  of  the  mighty  dead  of  our  heroic  age  are  still  resting  in 
their  midst.  Mount  Vernon  is  still  there.  So,  too,  is  Monticello. 
We  cannot  consent,  however,  that,  after  the  custom  of  the 
aboriginal  tribes,  they  shall  disinter  these  precious  relics  and 
carry  them  away  in  their  Hegira.  We  will  gather  them  up  with 
pious  hands,  and  build  a  mausoleum  over  them,  which  shall  be  a 
shrine  for  the  patriotic  pilgrims  of  future  times,  and  a  standing 
reproach  to  the  degeneracy  of  their  sons. 

The  Democratic  party  has  not  deemed  it  worth  while  to 
give  a  thought  in  its  platform  to  the  question  of  the  preservation 
of  the  Union.  Its  leaders  have  again  and  again  threatened  it 
with  destruction.  The  Republican  party  stands  pledged  to  main 
tain  its  integrity  under  all  circumstances.  It  was  in  the  very 
midst  of  the  tempest  and  fury  of  denunciation  on  the  floor  of 
Congress,  and  while  the  Council  Chamber  of  the  Nation  was 
ringing  with  the  treason,  which  the  galleries  were  applauding  to 
the  echo,  that  the  invocation  to  the  friends  of  the  Union,  which 
is  to  be  found  in  the  call  that  gathered  the  people  together  at 
Chicago,  was  penned  by  my  own  hand.  It  was  the  dominating 
thought  with  me,  as  it  was,  I  believe,  with  every  member  of  the 
committee.  It  re-appears  in  the  sublime  declaration  of  the 
Convention,  that  "the  Union  of  these  States  must  and  shall  be 
preserved."  It  is  a  vow  registered  in  heaven — an  oath  sworn 
upon  the  altar  of  our  common  country,  to  which  every  good 
patriot  in  the  nation  will  respond  with  a  thundering  amen!  The 
idea  of  a  dissolution  of  this  great  confederacy — the  last  hope  of 
liberty  to  man — set  as  it  were  upon  a  hill,  to  flood  this  continent 
with  light  and  to  send  its  rays  over  the  uttermost  isles — and  that, 
too,  upon  a  question  of  property  in  man — is  one  which  must  find 
no  utterance  here  to  make  it  familiar  to  our  ears,  and  is  not  even 
to  be  whispered  to  the  winds  that  waft  our  commerce  beyond  the 


430  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

seas.  What !  the  youngest-born  of  liberty,  with  its  red  baptism 
of  steel  and  fire — the  Union,  consecrated  by  so  many  glorious 
memories  and  cemented  by  so  many  rivers  of  blood — to  die  of 
Slavery  and  for  Slavery !  The  thought  is  treason,  and  we  but 
misbegotten  slips  of  a  once  noble  stock,  if  we  do  not  rebuke  it 
wherever  uttered — if  we  do  not  on  all  occasions  rally  around  that 
Union  as  the  ark  of  our  salvation,  and  smite  down  the  sacri 
legious  hand  that  is  laid  irreverently  upon  it.  If  that  Union 
itself  could  speak  to  the  dark  spirit  which  menaces  its  existence, 
its  answer  would  be,  as  it  pointed  up  the  ascent  which  we  have 
been  climbing  for  more  than  eighty  years : 

"Whence  and  what  art   thou,   execrable  shape! 
That  dares,  though  grim  and  terrible,  advance 
Thy  miscreated  front  athwart  my  way 
To  yonder  gates?     Through  them  I  mean  to  pass, 
That  be  assured,  without  leave  asked  of  thee: 
Retire,  or  taste  thy  folly,  and  learn  by  proof, 
Hell-born!  not  to  contend  with  spirits  of  Heaven!" 

No:  the  great  American  Republic,  the  Queen  of  the  New 
World,  the  asylum  of  the  oppressed  of  all  nations — whose  canvas 
now  whitens  every  sea,  and  whose  flag  is  known  and  respected 
on  every  shore — is  not  thus  to  perish  by  an  unfilial  hand.  It 
has  a  destiny  to  work  out  in  the  ages  that  are  to  come.  What 
glimpses  of  glory  flash  out  upon  our  dazzled  vision,  as  we  roll 
up  the  curtain  of  the  future,  and  look  down  through  the  long 
vista  which  is  before  us !  There  is  nothing  there  to  blast  the 
vision  of  the  seer,  or  to  cast  a  shadow  over  the  wide  field  of 
view,  except  the  one  dark  stain,  the  one  "damned  spot,"  which 
blots  our  escutcheon  and  even  now  threatens  our  existence  as  a 
nation.  It  will  fade  out,  however,  by  degrees,  under  the  glorious 
sunlight  of  an  advancing  civilization.  Yes,  fellow-citizens !  it 
is  written  on  earth  and  registered  in  heaven,  that  "the  Union 
of  these  States  must  and  shall  be  preserved"  in  its  totality,  with 
out  loss  and  without  diminution  !  There  is  no  star  in  that  glorious 
galaxy  that  shall  perish,  but  planet  after  planet,  won  from  chaos 
by  the  indomitable  energies  of  free  labor,  shall  wheel  into  our 
system,  until  our  shield  is  powdered  with  stars,  and  the  loftiest 
of  the  Cordilleras,  seated  on  his  throne  of  rocks,  and  soaring, 
with  his  snow-crowned  diadem,  away  into  the  summer  heavens, 
shall,  in  the  language  of  the  poet, 

— o'er  earth,  ocean,  wave, 
Glare,  with  his  Titan  eye,  and  see  no  slave!" 

And  now,  fellow-citizens,  but  one  word  more  and  I  have 
done.  In  regard  to  the  personal  merits  of  the  several  candidates 


t/2      iU 
t>      >< 

o  ~ 
W   .2 

si 

^    o 


8  S 

W  4= 

'X  M 

w  = 


:..-., 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE   LINCOLN   CAMPAIGN      43! 

who  are  before  you,  I  have  nothing  to  say.  I  agree  that  they 
are  all  respectable.  I  take  them  all,  as  selected  and  accredited 
by  their  respective  parties,  to  be  representative  men,  and  pledged 
to  administer  the  Government,  if  elected,  in  accordance  with  the 
spirit  of  their  respective  platforms.  If  you  are  of  the  opinion 
that  slavery  is  the  law  of  this  nation,  and  the  Union  itself  of  no 
value,  when  weighed  in  the  balance  against  it,  you  will  vote 
of  course  for  Breckinridge  and  Lane.  If  you  think  it  makes  no 
difference  whether  slavery  is  voted  up  or  voted  down,  and  that 
the  service  of  enlarging  its  dominion  over  a  territory  five  times 
as  large  as  the  State  of  New  York,  is  a  recommendation  to  a  can 
didate  here,  you  will  vote  for  Douglas  and  his  associate,  who 
think  that  capital  ought  to  own  those  of  you  who  are  con 
demned  to  labor.  If  you  think  it  is  wise  to  ignore  the  negro, 
and  to  leave  the  Government  to  be  administered  on  the  principle, 
that  everything  is  to  be  sacrificed,  as  heretofore,  for  the  sake  of 
quiet  and  repose,  you  will  support  the  ticket  of  the  very  respect 
able,  but  nervous  old  gentlemen,  who  have  such  a  salutary  horror 
of  everything  like  agitation.  If  you  think  with  me,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  we  want  free  thought  and  free  speech — protection  for 
free  labor,  and  homes  for  free  men — and  a  system  of  internal 
improvements  which  shall  clear  out  our  harbors  and  our  rivers, 
and  build  a  rail  road  to  the  Pacific,  you  will  vote  with  me  for  Lin 
coln  and  Hamlin — and  for  Andrew  G.  Curtin  in  the  first  place,  in 
order  to  secure  them  both.  As  you  shall  vote  on  the  second 
Tuesday  in  October,  so  will  be  almost  assuredly  the  result  in 
the  following  month.  Pennsylvania  is  admitted  to  be  the  battle 
ground.  Your  defeat  on  that  day  will  put  everything  to  hazard. 
Your  success  will  make  everything  sure.  The  Presidential 
question  is  staked  on  that  day's  struggle.  If  you  are  beaten 
then,  and  beaten  in  November,  the  case  will  pass  over  to  a 
tribunal  where  the  smallest  of  the  Slave  States  will  be  your  peer. 
That  is  all  that  is  now  aimed  at  by  the  combinations  which  are 
arrayed  against  you.  See  that  you  disconcert  their  arrange 
ments,  by  asserting  your  own  power,  and  disposing  of  this 
question  for  yourselves. 

And  Pittsburgh  and  Pennsylvania  responded  to  these 
eloquent  appeals !  A  few  days  later  and  Allegheny 
County  had  announced  the  splendid  majority  of  6,689! 
A  week  or  so  later  (October  2Oth),  Governor  Gideon 
Welles  of  Hartford,  who  had  just  read  this  Lafayette 
Hall  speech,  wrote  Mr.  Williams: 


432 


THOMAS   WILLIAMS 


"I  have  just  finished  the  perusal  of  your  very  excellent 
speech,  delivered  on  the  29th  ulto — in  Lafayette  Hall,  and 
thank  you  most  sincerely  for  the  interest  and  instruction  I  have 
derived  from  it.  The  issues  in  controversy  are  clearly  and 
forcibly  presented  and  the  convictions  and  conclusions  inevita 
ble.  I  am  not  surprised  that,  under  such  opinions  and  such 
teachings,  your  county  rolled  up  that  magnificent  majority  in 
the  late  election,  which  cheered  and  gladdened  every  Repub 
lican  heart.  I  was  with  the  National  Executive  Committee  at  the 
Astor  House  in  New  York  when  that  intelligence  reached  us  by 
Telegraph  at  nearly  n  P.  M.  Our  room  was  full  of  earnest, 
gallant,  generous  Republicans  when  the  Dispatch  was  brought 
in,  and  it  would  have  done  your  heart  good  to  have  heard  the 
thundering  cheers  that  went  up  for  glorious  old  Allegheny,  and 
which  were  caught  up  and  echoed  in  Broadway. 

"I  congratulate  you,  my  friend,  most  cordially  on  the 
triumph  you  have  achieved  in  Pennsylvania.  It  has  settled  the 
Presidential  election,  I  think,  for  in  all  human  probability 
Lincoln  will  be  our  next  President,  and  I  have  confidence  that 
his  administration  will  prove  a  great  success. 

"The  overthrow  of  the  existing  dynasty  had  become  a 
necessity  for  our  well-being  as  a  people.  It  has  become  chronic 
with  many,  that  the  so-called  Democratic  party  is  the  country, 
and  that  they  alone  can  administer  the  Government.  Under  this 
delusion,  the  slavery  propaganda  have  considered  themselves  as 
holding  us  in  subjection,  as  well  as  their  bond-men,  and — their 
threats  of  secession  and  disunion  if  the  Republicans  obtain  the 
ascendency.  It  is  almost  as  if  their  slaves  rose  to  govern  them. 
Republican  success,  and  that  alone  can  dissipate  the  errors  into 
which  many  of  our  opponents  have  fallen.  They  will,  in  a 
year  from  this  time  be  wiser,  and  I  hope  better  men  from  lessons 
learned  in  the  school  of  experience. 

"There  never  has  been  a  more  favorable  opportunity  for  an 
administration  to  acquire  name  and  fame  than  that  which  shall 
succeed  the  one  now  in  power.  To  those  of  us  who  through 
many  trials  and  tribulations,  and  long  periods  of  darkness  and 
gloom  have  fought  on,  faithful  and  hopeful,  the  present  pros 
pect  is  most  cheering,  and  we  may  well  interchange  sympathy 
and  congratulation.  *  *  *. 

"Very  respectfully, 

"GIDEON  WELLES/' 

The  Governor's  predictions  were,  as  is  well  known, 
verified  in  November.  Pennsylvania  went  nearly  a 
hundred  thousand  strong  for  "Father  Abraham" — 268,030 


A  NOTABLE  ADDRESS   IN  THE  LINCOLN  CAMPAIGN      433 

to  1/8,871  for  Breckinridge.  Mr.  Williams  was,  of  course, 
sent  to  the  Legislature — there  to  stand  for  two  great 
questions — one  local  and  one  national,  and  the  way  the 
national  one  sprang  into  vivid  reality  in  Pittsburgh  at 
this  time  is  well  illustrated  by  an  incident  noted  a  few 
years  ago  in  an  address  by  the  well-known  orator,  Con 
gressman  John  Dalzell.  "In  years  gone  by,"  said  he, 
"I  have  many  times  wandered  in  the  Arsenal  grounds, 
but  it  will  always  be  associated  with  a  boyish  recollec 
tion.  The  year  was  1860.  James  Buchanan  was  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States.  John  B.  Floyd  was  his  Secre 
tary  of  War.  The  Secretary  sent  an  order  that  would 
have  stripped  the  Arsenal  of  its  guns  and  sent  them 
South.  Secession  was  in  the  air.  The  order  created  the 
most  intense  indignation  amongst  the  citizens  of  Pitts 
burgh.  While  the  guns  were  on  their  way  down  Wood 
street  to  the  Monongahela  wharf  to  be  shipped  on  boats 
there  awaiting  them,  the  citizens  rose  in  arms.  They 
sent  a  protest  to  Washington.  They  held  an  indignation 
meeting  and  on  the  steps  of  the  old  Court  House  I 
listened  to  the  impassioned  eloquence  of  Thomas 
Williams,  then  or  afterwards  a  member  of  Congress  from 
this  district,  arguing  against  violence  and  appealing  to 
a  reverence  for  law.  The  Secretary's  order  was  with 
drawn,  and  the  guns  remained  where  they  belonged,  with 
us.  Grand  old  Thomas  Williams  I"1 

1  Copy  among  the  Williams  papers.  Address  at  Carnegie  Music  Hall,  on 
May  23,  1902.  The  event  itself  occurred  on  December  30,  1860.  Mr.  Williams 
was  chairman  of  the  committee  on  resolutions.  See  the  Gazette  of  December 
25th  to  3ist. 


CHAPTER    XV 
AT  HARRISBURG 

His   NOTABLE   SPEECH   ON   THE   MAINTENANCE   OF   THE 
CONSTITUTION  AND    THE    UNION  AND  THE  CLIMAX 
IN  His  FIGHT  AGAINST  THE  PENNSYL 
VANIA  RAILROAD 

HE   is    ONE    OF   THE    ESCORTS    OF    LINCOLN'S    FAMILY 
TO  WASHINGTON  AND    ATTENDS  THE  INAUGURATION 

1861 

When  the  Legislature  convened  at  Harrisburg  on 
New  Year's  Day,  1861,  Mr.  Williams,  who  had  been  in 
the. Senate  a  score  of  years  before,  now  appeared  in  the 
Lower  House  as  one  of  five  members  from  Allegheny 
County.  This  body,  while  it  was  elected,  like  Lincoln, 
to  insure  that  "the  Union  must  and  shall  be  preserved," 
by  a  careful  conciliation  of  all  parties,  and  a  judicious 
selection  of  War  Democrats  by  State  Chairman  A.  K. 
McClure,  of  the  Republican  committee,  was  with  equal 
care  managed  to  carry  out  two  financial  measures,  in 
behalf  of  the  interests  of  the  dominant  element  in  the 
political  oval  of  the  State,  represented  by  President 
Thomas  A.  Scott  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  the 
Philadelphia  interests  in  the  old  Sunbury  and  Erie  Rail 
road.1  Or,  to  state  this  latter  fact  in  another  way,  the 
Bismarckian  unifiers  of  industrial  Pennsylvania,  the  chief 
feature  of  whose  creed  was  the  absolute  necessity  of  a 
transportation  system  binding  the  State  together  and  to 
Philadelphia,  now  required  these  two  financial  measures 

1  Colonel  A.  K.  McClure  has  most  interestingly  told  the  writer  the  inside 
history  of  this  campaign,  as  well  as  that  in  the  Legislature  after  it  was  organ 
ized,  and  granted  the  privilege  of  using  any  of  it  that  may  contribute  to  the 
aims  of  this  narrative. 

434 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  435 

in  support  of  these  two  parts  in  that  prospective  system 
— and  they  took  the  necessary  steps  to  get  them.  There 
was  no  civil  war  yet,  and  few  believed  there  would  be, 
even  amongst  the  leaders ;  so  that  these  measures  occu 
pied  the  public  consciousness  to  a  degree  that  can  hardly 
be  understood  now.  "To  the  leaders  even,"  said  Colonel 
McClure  in  a  recent  conversation  with  the  author,  "the 
possibility  of  civil  war,  when  it  did  come  later,  was 
appalling — almost  paralyzing/'  So  that  at  the  organiza 
tion  of  the  Legislature  both  elements  were  alert  for 
advantage  on  these  financial  measures.  Governor  Pack 
er's  message  on  the  2d  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
State  debt  was  over  $38,500,000;  that  the  State  held 
mortgage  bonds  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  the  Sun- 
bury  and  Erie  and  the  Wyoming  Canal  Company  to  the 
amount  of  $10,981,000  ;*  that  since  July,  1858,  the  Penn 
sylvania  road  had  refused  to  pay  its  tonnage  tax,  claim 
ing  it  unconstitutional,  and  that  the  debt  amounted  then 
to  about  $700,000;  and  that  although  the  Sunbury  and 
Erie  road  had  148  of  its  288  miles  finished  and  115  miles 
graded  they  were  unable  to  negotiate  their  mortgage 
bonds  in  the  present  condition  of  the  bonds,  and  he  rec 
ommended  these  questions  to  careful  consideration.  He 
also  drew  attention  at  length  to  the  critical  action  of  the 
South  Carolina  convention,  which  assembled  on  Decem 
ber  2Oth  and  was  still  in  session.2  On  the  3d  nomina 
tions  for  the  vacancy  in  the  United  States  Senate  were 
made  and  among  the  names  presented  were  Edgar 
Cowan,  an  old  neighbor  of  Mr.  Williams'  at  Greens- 
burgh ;  Henry  D.Foster,  Mr.  Williams  himself,  Thaddeus 
Stevens,  Daniel  Agnew,  David  Wilmot  and  others,  and 
Cowan  was  the  final  choice.  On  the  same  day,  Mr. 
Williams  offered  resolutions  on  the  secession  question  in 
the  highest  statesmanlike  tone  and  temper,  the  final  par 
agraph  of  which  was :  "Resolved,  That  secession  is  revo 
lution,  and  its  inevitable  consequence,  war;  that  the 
integrity  of  the  Union  must  be  maintained  and  defended 
at  all  hazards  and  under  all  circumstances ;  and  that 

1  $7,200,000  of  the  first  corporation;  $3,500,000  of  the  second,  and  $281,000  of 
the  third.      Legislative  Record  of  1861,  p.  5. 

2  He   gives  a  very   interesting  outline  of  the   Commonwealth's   relation  to 
slaves  from  1705  down. 


436  THOMAS  WILLIAMS 

upon  this  question  the  people  of  Pennsylvania  will  be, 
as  they  have  ever  been,  a  united  people."1  When  an 
effort  was  made  to  lay  it  on  the  table,  Mr.  Williams  asked 
for  information  as  to  the  course  that  would  follow, saying: 
"I  am  not  very  familiar  with  parliamentary  law,  not  hav 
ing  had  a  very  enlarged  experience."  It  was  laid  over,  as 
a  joint  resolution.  This  point  is  significant  as  showing 
his  weak  point  in  the  fight  that  was  to  follow — at  least  in 
part.  On  the  7th  he  was  placed  on  the  general  judiciary 
committee.  Both  Houses  found  themselves  compelled  to 
discuss  the  South  Carolina  question,  all  the  more  so  be 
cause  of  the  Governor's  manner  of  presenting  it,  namely, 
that  there  was  a  possibility  that  the  State  had  laws  that 
were  contrary  to  the  national  Constitution  on  the  slave 
question.  A  strong  effort  was  made  to  put  Pennsylvania 
on  the  defensive  in  this  matter  and  to  conciliate  the  South, 
but  on  the  I4th — the  day  before  Governor  Curtin's  inau 
guration — everything  gave  way  to  the  special  order  on  the 
state  of  the  Union.  Mr.  Williams  first  secured  the  floor 
of  the  House  with  his  own  resolution,  which,  in  sub 
stance,  demanded  that  the  United  States  take  immediate 
measures  against  rebellion  and  that  Pennsylvania  should 
at  once  do  likewise  and  put  her  militia  on  a  war  footing. 
He  supported  his  contention  in  an  address  that  did  more 
to  bring  him  national  fame,  probably,  than  anything  he 
had  previously  done.  It  brought  him  letters  of  congratu 
lation  from  far  and  near.  It  was  reprinted  and  spread 
even  more  widely,  probably,  than  his  other  speeches.  It 
voiced  the  spirit  of  Pennsylvania  in  the  Civil  War,  and  it 
was  no  small  power  in  hastening  her  action.2 

"Mr.  Speaker,"  he  began,  "on  the  only  occasion  on  which 
it  has  ever  been  my  privilege  to  speak  in  this  Hall,  the  nation 
was  sitting  in  gloom,  and  these  walls  were  shrouded  in  the 
drapery  of  woe.  The  Chief  of  this  great  Republic  had  just 
bowed  his  venerable  head  before  the  arrows  of  the  Destroyer,  and 

1  Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.  21. 

2  It  was  noised  about  that  he  was  to  speak  and  almost  the  entire  Senate 
was  present,  among  other  attendants.     Letter  of  January  15,   1861.     A  letter  of 
January  ;th  shows  that  he  had  tried    to    make    this    address    before,    but    the 
friends  of  the  other  senatorial  candidates  combined  to  prevent  it,   fearing  the 
result  on  their  candidates'  chances.     A  letter  of  January  ist  indicates  his  pur 
pose  to  speak  on  the  next  day.     The    address    was    published    in    full    in    the 
Harrisburg  Telegraph  on  the  i/th. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  437 

the  Representatives  of  the  people  were  gathered  here,  to  testify 
their  sense  of  the  great  calamity  which  had  befallen  us.  Nearly 
twenty  years  have  passed  away,  and  the  providence  of  God  has 
sent  me  back,  on  an  occasion  of  deeper  gloom  by  far  than  the 
mere  transient  eclipse  which  then  shed  a  temporary  twilight  over 
the  land.  My  errand  here,  like  yours,  was  to  attend  to  the 
domestic  interests  of  the  great  State  that  owns  our  sway.  I  am 
met,  like  you,  upon  the  threshold  of  this  capitol,  by  a  higher 
summons.  I  find  my  sphere  of  duties  unexpectedly  enlarged.  It 
is  not  Pennsylvania  that  calls  to-day,  it  is  the  great  Ameri 
can  Republic  that  demands  the  counsels  of  her  children.  The 
temple  which  our  fathers  built — the  altar  around  which  we 
worshiped  in  infancy,  and  under  whose  shadow  we  have  ripened 
into  strength  and  manhood — the  Union  of  these  States — the 
ark  of  our  salvation — the  sanctuary  of  our  peace — the  tower  of 
our  strength — the  pearl  of  our  pride — constructed  with  so  much 
labor — glorified  by  so  many  recollections — and  fraught  with  so 
many  hopes  to  man — that  mighty  Union,  which,  almost  within 
the  memory  of  man,  has  clasped  a  continent  in  its  embrace,  and 
which,  as  we  all  fondly  believed,  was  destined  to  live  forever — is 
threatened  with  destruction.  It  is  no  foreign  foe  that  summons 
us  to  its  deliverance.  In  that  direction,  we  know  and  feel  that 
it  can  safely  defy  the  world  in  arms.  No !  it  is  an  enemy  within 
our  gates,  and  worse  than  all,  it  is  a  parricidal  hand  that  now 
swings  the  incendiary  torch  over  the  fairest  fabric  that  ever 
crowned  the  labors,  or  blessed  the  hopes  or  the  prayers  of  man. 
"And  what  is  the  cause  that  menaces  this  great  structure 
with  overthrow?  Has  it  failed  to  accomplish  the  objects  for 
which  it  was  erected  ?  Has  it  laid  a  heavy  hand  upon  any  of  its 
people?  Has  it  confiscated  their  property?  Has  it  stripped  the 
laborer  of  his  rewards  by  the  severity  of  its  exactions?  Has  it 
trodden  down  the  rights  of  a  minority  with  an  armed  heel? 
Has  it  visited  any  portion  of  its  dominions  with  fire  and  sword? 
No,  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  has  been  felt  only  in  the  blessings 
which  have  descended  from  it,  like  the  early  dew  upon  the 
tender  herb.  Peace  and  security  have  reposed  beneath  the 
shadow  of  its  flag;  plenty  and  prosperity  have  reigned  through 
out  all  its  borders.  What  is  it,  then,  that  menaces  its  existence  ? 
Why,  nothing  but  the  simple  exercise  of  a  constitutional  right 
never  before  questioned ;  nothing  but  the  partial  enthronement 
of  an  idea,  not  yet  realized  in  act,  in  the  election  of  a  Presi 
dent.  Never  was  provocation  so  inadequate  assigned  for  an  act 
so  momentous  in  its  character  and  consequences.  On  its  face, 
it  is  but  a  pretext — the  hollowest  and  the  shallowest — for  a  pre 
meditated  parricide.  The  world  will  so  judge  it.  If  mischief 


438  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

should  ensue,  we  shall  stand  excused,  unless  we  fail  to  put  forth 
our  hands  to  prevent  it. 

"The  State  of  South  Carolina — one  of  the  old  thirteen — torn 
by  the  valor  of  his  sister  States  from  the  arms  of  the  mother 
country — always  turbulent,  disaffected,  rebellious — never  loyal 
but  to  the  British  Crown — has  run  up  the  flag  of  rebellion,  and 
publicly  abjured  her  allegiance  to  that  Government  of  which  she 
has  been  a  member  for  more  than  seventy  years.  The  Gulf 
States — purchased  with  our  money,  nurtured  by  our  care,  and 
raised  to  the  dignity  of  brotherhood  by  our  indulgence — and  if 
not  States,  then  Territories  still — have  given  tokens  of  a  dispo 
sition  to  take  leave  of  us  in  the  same  cool  and  quiet  way.  We 
have  met  this  danger  before,  as  regards  the  former,  and  have 
outlived  it.  In  itself  there  is  nothing,  I  think,  to  inspire  extra 
ordinary  alarm.  We  can  afford  to  laugh  these  threats  to  scorn, 
while  we  deplore  the  alienation  which  begets  them,  if  \ve  are  but 
true  to  ourselves.  The  danger  resides  exclusively  in  the  idea — 
and  I  admit  it  is  a  great  one — that  we  are  to  stand  by,  and 
allow  this  great  ruin  to  be  accomplished  without  even  a  struggle, 
either  because  we  cannot,  or  because  we  ought  not,  or  because 
we  do  not  desire  to  prevent  it.  The  Press,  and  to  some  extent 
the  Pulpit — powers  equal  to  the  sword,  and  perhaps  even  greater 
— have  given  currency  to  the  idea  that  coercion  is  impracticable, 
that  its  exercise  would  not  be  in  conformity  with  the  spirit  of 
our  institutions,  and  that  it  would  be  a  good  riddance  to  be 
relieved  of  so  turbulent  a  confederate  at  any  price.  The  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  profiting  by  the  hint,  while  he 
denounces  secession  as  revolution,  invites  and  encourages  the 
experiment,  by  declaring  that  he  has  no  power  to  prevent  it. 
He  breaks  his  sword,  like  his  Secretary,  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  a  craven,  abdicates  his  high  trust  as  the 
executioner  of  the  laws.  And  this  it  is  that  has  made  me  feel, 
for  the  first  time,  that  we  are  drifting  rapidly  and  helplessly 
upon  the  breakers  of  disunion,  with  imminent  peril  of  ship 
wreck,  not  to  one  State  only,  but  to  all. 

"Allow  me  to  say,  that  these  are  fearful  heresies.  Those 
who  indulge  in  them  have  not,  I  think,  duly  reflected  upon  the 
consequences  to  which  they  lead.  It  is  not  even  true,  that  we 
should  be  better  off  without  these  States  than  with  them.  This 
Government  is  a  unit.  Better  even  a  diseased  limb,  which  is 
not  incurable,  than  the  doubtful  remedy  of  amputation.  Seces 
sion  is  revolution.  That  is  a  right  which  nobody  disputes,  where 
the  provocation  is  an  adequate  one.  It  must  be  asserted,  how 
ever,  at  the  point  of  the  sword.  If  unsuccessful,  it  is  rebellion 
—no  more  and  no  less.  There  can  be  no  peaceable  secession 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  439 

without  treason  on  the  part  of  our  rulers,  who  are  only  our 
trustees.  They  have  no  alternative  but  to  enforce  the  laws,  so 
far  as  the  powers  lodged  with  them  are  available  for  that  pur 
pose.  The  act  threatened  here,  which  aims  at  the  very  life  of 
the  Government,  is  treason  against  it,  by  virtue  of  its  organic 
law,  and  no  authority  of  Congress  can  make  it  otherwise.  The 
very  attempt  to  legalize  it  would  be  something  like  treason  on 
the  part  of  Congress  itself.  The  Constitution  is  a  covenant  of 
life,  and  not  of  death.  This  Government  was  intended  to  be 
perpetual.  It  contains  no  provision  for  its  own  dissolution.  To 
rupture  it,  would  be  to  dissolve  it.  It  will  not  divide  like  the 
polypus.  If  South  Carolina  is  out  of  it,  so  are  we.  When  it 
dissolves,  it  will  be  like  some  wandering  aerolite,  which  conies 
within  the  range  of  our  atmosphere,  and  scatters  its  meteoric 
shower  in  every  direction.  We  shall  then  cease  to  be  a  nation, 
and  fall  into  an  ill-assorted  and  ill-compacted  league  of  jarring, 
discordant,  belligerent,  and  heterogenous  republics,  ready  to  fly 
off  upon  the  slightest  provocation,  and  take  each  other  by  the 
throats.  \Ye  shall  come  together  again,  no  doubt,  in  process  of 
time,  but  it  will  be  by  the  power  of  the  sword,  and  under  the 
rule  of  the  standing  army  and  the  bayonet;  it  will  be  by  the 
repelling  force  of  anarchy. 

"And  all  this  is  to  be  risked  in  order  to  avoid  coercion, 
either  because  we  have  not  the  power,  or  because  it  would  be 
inconsistent  with  the  genius  of  a  Republican  government,  to 
compel  its  own  citizens  to  obey  its  rule.  No  government  has 
ever  yet  parted  with  any  portion  of  its  territories  to  a  rebellious 
member,  without  at  least  a  struggle  to  maintain  them.  When 
we  shall  have  tried  the  experiment,  and  failed,  it  will  be  time 
enough  to  retire  from  the  field,  and  confess  that  we  are  not 
adequate  to  the  task  of  self-preservation,  which  would  involve 
the  humiliating  confession,  that  Republican  government  is  itself 
a  failure.  I,  for  one,  am  not  prepared  to  make  this  admission, 
without,  at  least,  an  effort  to  preserve  what  our  Fathers  have 
left  us.  Our  past  experience  proves  the  contrary.  The  disaf 
fected  States  are  weak — so  weak,  as  we  know,  that  they  could 
not  stand  alone.  That  which  is  with  them  an  element  of  political 
power,  is  equally  an  element  of  moral  and  physical  weakness. 
The  North  is  the  insurer  of  the  slave.  The  South  is  the  only 
vulnerable  point  of  our  Republic.  It  is  the  heel  of  Achilles. 
The  Government,  badly  administered  as  it  has  been,  is  still 
strong  in  the  affections  of  the  people.  They  will  rally  around 
it  to  a  man  in  the  Free  States,  at  all  events,  where  the  power 
of  the  Government  mainly  resides.  The  moment  it  becomes  a 
question  of  self-preservation,  there  will  be  no  two  parties  here. 


44O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Secession,  if  practicable,  would  make  us  one.  In  the  Union,  the 
Slave  States  might  have  friends  among  us — out  of  the  Union, 
they  are  the  enemies  of  us  all,  and  can  look  for  no  aid  or 
sympathy  in  this  direction.  We  shall  be  all  agreed — then,  if  not 
now — 'to  treat  them  as  we  do  the  rest  of  mankind,  as  enemies 
in  war,  in  peace,  friends.' 

"But  what  is  there  in  the  genius  of  our  institutions,  or  the 
voluntary  character  of  our  Government,  to  forbid  the  use  of 
force  to  compel  obedience  to  the  laws?  The  idea  is  as  absurd 
as  it  is  dangerous.  No  government  ever  did,  or  ever  can  stand 
upon  the  mere  bond  of  love,  while  human  nature  continues  to 
be  what  it  is.  We  are  told  that  the  angels  rebelled;  but  they 
were  cast  out  for  their  disobedience.  Even  the  family  govern 
ment  itself  recognizes  the  law  of  coercion.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  exertion  of  force  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  law  of 
kindness.  The  master  corrects  his  servant,  and  the  father  his 
erring  child,  without  violating  that  law.  No  government  has 
ever  yet  been  administered  without  the  aid  of  a  magistracy  and 
a  police.  They  enter  largely  into  our  own.  We  have  our 
jails  and  our  penitentiaries,  our  sheriffs  and  our  marshals.  We 
maintain  our  armies.  There  is  the  array  of  the  posse  comitatus 
to  aid  the  former.  If  the  civil  magistracy  is  too  weak,  we  call 
in  the  arm  of  the  military.  The  General  Government  has  never 
before  hesitated  to  employ  it,  when  required.  It  suppressed  an 
insurrection  in  this  State,  against  its  own  laws.  It  has  unloosed 
its  dragoons  upon  the  Territories.  Why  should  it  falter  now? 
The  admission  of  the  novel  principle  that  coercion  is  not  to  be 
employed,  is  a  signal  for  revolt — an  act  of  self-destruction. 
Concede  it,  and  we  are  no  longer  a  Government.  The  States, 
even  the  smallest  of  them,  will  laugh  at  your  acts  of  Congress, 
whenever  they  do  not  like  them,  and  pluck  your  holiday  soldiers 
contemptuously  by  the  beard.  Nay,  more.  You  must  disband 
your  armies,  because  they  will  have  ceased  to  be  of  any  practical 
use.  No  longer  needed  to  overawe  the  negro,  their  only  mission 
will  be  to  hunt  down  and  massacre  the  unhappy  Indian. 

"It  will  be  said,  however^  that  it  is  only  where  the  popular 
sentiment  of  a  State  is  apparently  unanimous,  that  the  Federal 
Government  must  yield.  I  know  no  State,  as  distinguished  from 
this  Union.  It  is  a  Government  of  the  people,  and  acts  only 
upon  individuals.  If  it  cannot  seize  and  hang  the  State  of  South 
Carolina,  it  can  at  least  lay  its  hands  upon  the  rebel  Governor, 
and  all  the  traitors  who  are  compassing  our  destruction.  But 
how  are  we  to  know  that  the  people  of  a  State  are  universally 
agreed?  Are  we  to  take  the  newspapers,  or  the  noisy  dema 
gogues,  as  our  guide?  Is  no  allowance  to  be  made  for  the 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  44! 

quiet,  reflecting  conservatism,  which  may  be  overawed  and 
silenced  by  the  clamors  of  the  mob?  The  present  state  of 
alarm  in  the  South  is  death  to  the  actual  proprietor  of  the  soil 
and  the  slave.  Who  knows  but  that  the  mere  exhibition  of  force 
on  the  part  of  the  General  Government,  would  develop  a  senti 
ment  that  is  now  smothered?  Shall  we  allow  the  men  who 
entertain  it  to  be  ruined,  because  we  will  not  give  them  an 
opportunity  to  speak  out?  Shall  we  abandon  them  to  the  hands 
of  a  few  madmen,  without  even  an  effort  to  save  them? 

"But  we  are  told  that  it  will  not  do  to  draw  blood — that  the 
first  drop  spilled,  will  be  the  signal  for  perpetual  war.  I  agree 
that  the  necessity  of  shedding  blood,  particularly  a  brother's, 
is  always  to  be  deplored.  We  must  not  play  the  woman,  how 
ever,  in  such  a  crisis  as  this.  Our  ancestors  were  men  who  did 
not  faint  at  the  sight  of  blood.  Torrents  of  it  have  flowed  in 
the  conquest  and  preservation  of  these  States.  We  keep  up 
armies  to  shed  it,  if  necessary,  in  no  greater  cause.  The  scaf 
fold  has  been  the  meed  of  treason  everywhere.  General  Jackson 
has  somewhere  said,  that  secession  is  treason,  and  its  penalty 
death.  But  how  much  blood  will  it  cost?  The  way  to  save  its 
effusion  is  to  show  that  we  are  ready  always  to  shed  it,  if  neces 
sary,  in  a  righteous  cause.  How  do  we  know  that  it  will  cost 
any  more  than  a  few  heads  in  the  present  case?  Does  anybody 
think  to  save  it,  by  allowing  these  States  to  secede  peaceably? 
If  they  do,  they  are  greatly  mistaken.  For  drops,  we  shall  have 
oceans.  For  a  few  traitorous  heads,  we  shall  have  hecatombs 
of  unoffending  victims.  For  a  war  of  a  single  campaign — for 
the  blockade  of  a  port — we  shall  have  bloody  feuds  along  all 
our  borders — the  whole  country  a  camp,  and  the  whole  Union 
a  battle-ground.  How  long  shall  we  maintain  peace  on  the 
border,  with  our  present  causes  of  quarrel  greatly  exasperated? 
The  negro  will  run  away  more  frequently  than  before,  and  there 
will  be  no  fugitive  slave  law  to  reclaim  him.  If  the  owner 
follows,  he  will  be  dealt  with  as  an  invader.  The  South  will 
make  reprisals.  If  it  attempts  to  close  or  embarrass  the  outlet 
of  the  Mississippi,  the  stalwart  boatmen  of  the  West  will  hew 
their  way  to  the  Gulf  with  fire  and  sword.  If  the  feeling  of 
insecurity — intensified  as  it  will  be — should  prompt  the  seizure 
of  the  Northern  trader,  or  the  confiscation  of  his  goods,  we 
shall  not  then  bear  in  silence  with  the  indignities  which  are  put 
upon  us  now,  and  tolerated,  because  these  men  are  our  brethren. 
By  such  a  lawless  course,  they  will  put  themselves  beyond  the 
pale  of  civilization — outside  of  the  family  of  nations.  New 
York,  and  Massachusetts,  and  Pennsylvania,  and  Ohio,  will 
demand  an  instant  and  ample  reparation  for  every  wrong,  and 


442  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

our  fleets  will  thunder  at  the  gates  of  Charleston,  and  Savannah, 
and  Pensacola,  and  Mobile,  and  New  Orleans,  while  our  land 
armies  will  unbind  the  shackles  of  the  slave,  and  put  the  weapons 
of  destruction  into  his  hands.  And  the  result  will  be,  that  after 
a  fierce  and  bloody  struggle,  they  will  come  back  again,  as 
Provinces,  if  not  as  States,  to  be  re-admitted,  if  we  shall  so  long 
hold  together,  with  the  root  of  bitterness  extirpated,  and  slavery 
extinguished  forever.  And  this  is  the  peace  which  is  promised 
us  as  the  reward  of  our  connivance  in  an  act  of  treason !  Men 
who  profess  to  be  conservative,  and  call  themselves  statesmen, 
may  go  about  the  streets  crying  'Peace !  peace !' — but  there  will 
be  no  peace  here,  but  the  peace  of  Pandemonium.  God  grant 
that  our  eyes  may  never  open  upon  such  a  scene  of  devastated 
harvests  and  desolated  homes,  as  is  foreshadowed  here ! 

"Is  there  any  thing  in  the  use  of  coercion,  by  way  of  preven 
tion  and  correction  only,  to  foreshadow  such  a  state  of  things 
as  this  ?  There  never  was  a  time,  and  never  will  be,  when  force 
could  be  applied  more  properly,  more  easily,  more  successfully, 
or  at  a  less  expenditure  of  blood,  than  now.  The  provocation  is 
absolutely  nothing.  Our  sin  is,  that  we  have  chosen  to  exercise 
an  undoubted  constitutional  right,  by  defeating  them  in  a  fair 
contest,  and  electing  the  man  of  our  own  choice.  That  man  is 
not  yet  inaugurated.  If  he  were,  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 
to  harm  them.  The  slave  power  is  intrenched  in  every  depart 
ment  of  our  Government.  There  is  no  offense  in  act.  The 
grievance  is,  that  the  people  of  the  Free  States  have  indorsed 
the  Republican  idea  that  slavery  is  an  evil,  and  ought  not  to  be 
extended.  The  crime  is,  that  we  do  not  think  as  they  do.  It 
is  the  idea  only,  according  to  a  Northern  apologist,  that  amounts 
to  a  declaration  of  war,  and  severs  the  golden  thread  that  binds 
these  States  together.  It  is  for  a  difference  of  opinion  only,  that 
the  South  proposes  to  secede  from  the  Union.  We  know  that 
it  is  but  a  pretext.  The  very  fact,  however,  of  its  flimsiness, 
is  a  Providential  one  for  us,  if  we  are  prepared  to  improve  the 
advantage  which  it  gives  us.  It  will  be  impossible  for  the  mal 
contents  to  find  defenders  any  where  upon  such  an  issue  as  this, 
and  the  hands  of  the  Government  will  be  strengthened  by  the 
co-operation  of  the  Border  States,  and  certainly  by  the  unani 
mous  sentiment  of  the  North,  and  the  equally  unanimous  judg 
ment  of  the  civilized  world.  The  time  has  come  to  crush  at  a 
single  blow  the  serpent  of  sedition,  whilst  it  is  yet  weak  and 
without  sympathizers.  I  should  despair  of  the  Republic,  if  we 
hesitated.  Instead  of  furnishing  excuses  to  a  weak  and  unfaith 
ful  Executive,  for  skulking  from  the  performance  of  his  duty, 
we  ought  rather  to  strengthen  his  feeble  knees,  and  encourage 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  443 

him  to  profit  by  the  signal  fortune,  which  has  put  into  his  hands, 
at  the  close  of  a  disgraceful  administration,  the  opportunity  of 
redeeming  his  past  errors,  and  retiring  amid  the  plaudits  of  the 
nation,  in  the  character  of  a  deliverer  from  the  great  peril  into 
which  he  has  himself  conducted  it. 

"Is  there  any  other  course  still  left  to  us?  Yes,  we  are  told 
there  is  another.  While  the  people  of  Pennsylvania  are  on  tip 
toe,  straining  their  ears  in  the  direction  of  the  South,  and  wait 
ing  to  hear  the  first  boom  of  the  cannon,  and  the  roar  and  the 
shout  of  the  opening  conflict,  a  soft  whisper  of  peace  comes  up 
to  us  on  the  Eastern  breeze,  and  ten  thousand  citizens  of  Phila 
delphia, — whether  men  or  women  I  know  not, — instead  of 
putting  on  their  armor,  and  taking  down  their  rifles  from  the 
wall,  as  did  our  Fathers,  when  the  first  blast  of  the  war-bugle 
rent  the  quiet  air  upon  the  plains  of  Lexington — are  thronging 
our  Halls,  and,  on  their  knees  before  us,  with  the  beseeching 
cry,  that  we  shall  lay  down  our  arms,  and  surrender  at  discre 
tion. 

"Well,  this  is  an  easy  remedy  in  most  cases  of  dispute,  but 
one  which  it  is  not  usual  for  the  weak  to  dictate  to  the  strong, 
or  the  vanquished  to  the  victors.  It  is,  however,  the  commercial 
nostrum.  Those,  whose  business  it  is  to  buy  and  sell,  and  deal  in 
stocks  and  public  securities,  are  apt  to  think  that  everything — 
even  to  liberty,  and  manhood,  and  self-respect  itself — is  a  legiti 
mate  article  of  traffic,  and  to  be  rated  at  just  so  much  current 
money  of  the  merchant.  The  device  which  we,  of  Western 
Pennsylvania,  bore  upon  our  banners,  was  'Union  and  Liberty.' 
'Concession  before  Secession'  was  the  pithy,  but  somewhat  hum 
ble  sentiment,  that  streamed  from  the  windows  of  the  great 
caravanserai  on  Chestnut  street,  and  found  expression  on  the 
lips  of  orators  at  Independence  Square.  It  was  not  the 
language  which  our  Fathers  held  at  the  same  place.  It  was  not, 
I  think,  the  great  heart  of  Philadelphia  that  spoke  out  there. 
It  was  not,  surely,  the  great  bell  of  liberty,  with  its  glorious 
device — the  brazen  metal  which  rang  out  the  tocsin  of  the 
Revolution — that  gathered  that  assemblage  together.  Judging 
from  its  tone,  and  some  things  that  preceded  it,  I  should  rather 
suspect  it  was  something  more  resembling  the  fire-alarm  that 
starts  the  sleeper  from  his  bed  and  sends  him  half-naked  and 
shivering  into  the  street.  That  meeting  was  a  sacrifice  of  burnt 
offerings  for  imputed  and  acknowledged  sins.  Its  high  priests 
were  official  dignitaries.  It  was  heralded  by  the  immolation  of 
a  propitiatory  victim — a  ram  caught  in  the  thicket — in  the  person 
of  a  gifted  Republican  orator  and  scholar  who  had  been  invited 
there  to  lecture  on  the  very  delicate  and  somewhat  questionable 


/|/)/j  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

topic  of  honesty.  Its  cry  was  for  peace  on  any  terms.  It 
brought  judges  there,  fresh  from  scenes  of  domestic  confisca 
tion — their  hands  red  with  the  slaughter  of  the  innocents — to 
disturb  the  peace  of  the  nation,  by  misrepresenting  the  aims  of 
the  Republican  party,  and  weeping  crocodile  tears  over  imagi 
nary  confiscations  of  property  in  slaves.  It  lamented  over  the 
irrepressible  conflict  as  a  Northern  sin.  It  apologized  most 
humbly  for  our  Pennsylvania  vote,  and  protested  that  we  meant 
nothing  more  than  a  Tariff — in  happy  unconsciousness  of  the 
fact,  that  the  protection  of  free  labor  was  the  very  expression  of 
that  conflict,  if  it  exists  at  all.  It  could  see  nothing  right  on  the 
sunny  side  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  and  nothing  wrong  on  the 
shady  one.  It  had  no  thought  for  the  dark-skinned  African 
sailor,  who  is  thrown  into  prison,  and  sold  into  slavery  in 
Southern  ports,  for  the  payment  of  fines  unconstitutionally 
imposed.  It  had  no  bowels  for  the  Northern  freeman,  whose 
claim  to  the  sacred  title  of  American  citizen — unlike  that  of 
Paul  in  the  remotest  province  of  the  Roman  Empire — is  vainly 
invoked  to  stay  the  uplifted  scourge.  It  pledged  itself  for  a  strict 
scrutiny,  and  thorough  expurgation  of  our  statute  books,  and 
a  liberal  indemnity  for  every  runaway  negro  who  might  take 
refuge  amongst  us.  If  the  people  had  gone  there  in  solemn  pro 
cession,  barefooted  and  bareheaded,  with  ropes  around  their 
necks,  and  girdles  of  hair  cloth  about  their  loins,  they  could  not 
have  exhibited  a  more  edifying  spectacle  of  penitential  sorrow. 
"Well,  I  am  as  much  a  lover  peace  as  any  man,  and 
would  go  as  far  as  most  men  to  preserve  it.  It  is  not  to  be  pur 
chased,  however,  by  such  sacrifices  as  these.  If  it  were,  I  would 
not  buy  it  by  an  act  of  self-abasement.  I  could  not  smite  my 
chest,  and  bow  down  my  face  in  the  dust,  and  cry  aloud,  that 
we  are  miserable  sinners.  I  do  not  admit  that  we  have  sinned. 
I  find  nothing  in  our  statute  books,  that  I  \vould  be  willing  to 
sacrifice  as  a  peace  offering  to  this  insatiable  spirit.  We  have 
no  concessions  to  make,  unless  we  are  ready  to  confess  that  we 
have  sinned  in  giving  the  vote  of  this  State  to  the  man  of  our 
own  choice.  As  a  sovereign  member  of  this  Union,  we  have 
stood  faithfully  by  our  contract,  although  in  some  respects  an 
unequal  one,  and  will  expect  all  others  to  do  the  same.  We 
have  borne  the  rule  of  the  Slave  States  from  the  beginning, 
without  a  murmur.  \Vhen  we  were  defeated,  we  acquiesced 
as  good  citizens.  We  should  have  done  so  now,  if  we  had  been 
beaten.  Because  we  have  succeeded,  and  the  sceptre  has  passed 
into  other  hands,  it  is  now  insisted  that  we  shall  not  rule  this 
nation,  and  that  it  shall  be  dismembered,  unless  we  will  con 
sent  to  make  a  new  Constitution.  It  cost  great  labor,  and  many 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  445 

sacrifices,  to  make  the  present  one.  We  cannot  make  a  better. 
If  it  were  to  be  done  anew,  I  doubt  much  whether  we  could 
make  any  at  all.  The  Cotton  States  are  estranged  from  us. 
They  have  come  to  love  slavery  better  than  liberty.  They  have 
pulled  down  our  glorious  emblem,  and  run  up  in  its  place  the 
miserable  palmetto  branch,  with  the  trail  of  the  serpent  over 
it.  They  have  blotted  out  our  National  holiday  from  their 
calendar.  They  have  hissed  our  National  anthems  on  their 
stage.  They  have  ceased  even  to  pray  for  the  President  of 
their  own  choice,  who,  in  an  evil  hour  for  himself,  has  listened, 
and  fallen  a  victim  to  their  wiles  and  their  seductions.  They 
think  that  the  rule  of  the  majority  is  inconsistent  with  the 
safety  of  their  idol.  It  is  they,  and  not  we,  who  insist  that 
there  is  an  irrepressible  conflict  between  our  two  great  systems 
of  labor — that  the  one  wants  protection,  while  the  other  is 
injured  by  it.  They  are  jealous  of  the  growth  of  the  Free 
States,  and  alarmed  by  the  revelations  of  the  recent  census. 
They  want  to  get  away  into  a  government,  where  the  minority 
shall  bear  rule.  We  may  purchase  peace  by  allowing  them  to 
govern  us,  but  on  no  other  terms.  To  secure  it,  we  must  abandon 
the  idea  of  a  Tariff.  No  concessions  short  of  this  will  satisfy 
them.  I  know  that  trade  is  timid,  and  not  always  as  proud  or 
conscientious  as  it  ought  to  be.  It  must  be  remembered,  how 
ever,  that  it  can  purchase  no  solid  privileges  at  the  price  of 
liberty.  Nothing  better  than  a  hollow  truce  was  ever  patched  up 
at  the  expense  of  manhood.  They  think  meanly  of  us  now,  or 
they  would  not  insult  us  by  their  menaces.  WTe  shall  give  them 
new  reason  to  despise  us,  if  we  yield  to  their  demands.  The. 
Dutch  merchants  paid  a  high  price  to  the  Japanese,  when  they 
agreed  to  spit  and  trample  upon  the  cross,  in  order  to  secure 
their  trade,  and  the  Japanese  paid  them  back  with  the  con 
tempt  which  they  deserved.  How  will  the  little  sovereignty 
of  South  Carolina  strut  and  swell  in  vain-glorious  pride,  when 
she  finds  a  great  community,  of  twice  her  size,  and  a  hundred 
times  her  wealth,  on  its  knees  before  her,  begging  for  mercy 
and  for  trade,  on  any  terms  !  It  was  not  thus  that  the  old 
Dutch  Republic  acquired  her  renown  and  wealth,  when  Van 
Tromp  and  De  Ruyter  swept  the  Channel  with  the  broom  at 
their  mast-heads.  It  was  not  thus  that  lordly  Tyre,  whose 
merchants  were  princes,  gathered  the  riches  of  the  world  into 
her  lap.  It  was  not  in  that  spirit,  that  proud  Genoa  manned 
her  galleys  for  the  empire  of  the  seas.  It  was  not  in  that 
spirit,  that  her  still  prouder  rival,  the  Queen  and  the  Bride  of 
the  Adriatic,  exacted  the  homage  of  the  passing  cruiser,  and 
reared  the  Lion  of  St.  Marc  at  the  gates  of  the  Imperial  City 


446  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  the  East.  It  was  not  thus  that  Philadelphia  shone,  when 
the  spirit  of  her  merchants  was  incarnate  in  her  Morris,  and 
the  nerve  of  her  Press  illustrated  in  her  Franklin.  It  is  not 
thus  that  her  stout-hearted  mechanics,  and  her  strong-armed 
working  men — that  turbulent  class,  who  are  expected  to  do  so 
much  mischief — think  and  feel  now.  I  would  trust  the  honor 
of  the  State,  and  the  safety  of  the  Republic,  to  their  keeping. 

"But  what  is  it  that  these  States  demand  of  us?  They  have 
asked  for  nothing.  Why  should  we  hasten  to  prepare  unsolic 
ited  offerings  ?  Why  should  we  wreathe  our  garlands,  and  offer 
voluntary  oblations  upon  their  altars,  in  the  vain  hope  of  appeas 
ing  them  ?  Are  these  men  to  be  reasoned  with  ?  Will  anything 
satisfy  them?  Is  there  anything  in  our  laws  that  is  wrong? 
That  is  not  pretended.  Is  there  anything  that  looks  unfriendly  ? 
If  there  be,  I  should  be  willing  to  rectify  it — but  not  now.  We 
can  afford  to  be  magnanimous ;  we  cannot  afford  to  be  misunder 
stood.  They  would  misconstrue  the  motive,,  and  the  act.  It 
would  be  taken  as  a  confession  of  guilt,  and  an  evidence  of 
cowardice.  Have  our  past  concessions  brought  us  any  permanent 
peace?  How  was  it  with  the  Missouri  Compromise?  How 
was  it  with  the  Compromise  Bill  of  1833?  These  are  the  bitter 
fountains,  whose  waters  we  are  now  drinking.  These  are  the 
dragon's  teeth,  from  which  a  harvest  of  armed  men  has  sprung 
up.  The  question  could  have  been  settled  in  1820.  It  was  only 
postponed,  and  rendered  more  difficult  by  these  concessions. 
They  have  taken  an  undue  advantage  of  our  love  for  the  Union. 
They  have  been  encouraged  by  our  concessions  to  rise  in  their 
demands.  It  is  our  hesitation — our  want  of  firmness — that  has 
given  birth  to  the  existing  rebellion.  If  we  had  put  forth  our 
strength  at  its  first  appearance,  it  would  have  subsided  at  once. 
It  has  gathered  head  from  our  delay.  It  will  go  down  as  soon 
as  the  lion  of  the  North  shall  awaken  from  his  sleep,  and  startle 
the  country  by  his  roar.  New  York  and  Ohio  have  already 
girded  themselves  for  the  battle.  Pennsylvania  is  still  sleeping. 
All  that  is  now  wanted  is  the  expression  of  her  potent  voice. 
Every  drop  of  blood  shed  in  this  contest  will  be  on  the  heads  and 
the  consciences  of  the  timid  advisers,  who  have  counseled  peace 
and  advised  concession.  It  was  a  philosophic  remark  of  the  cele 
brated  Junius,  'that  fear  admitted  into  public  counsels  betrays 
like  treason.'  I  do  not  impute  a  treasonable  intention  to  the 
President  himself.  It  is  to  his  pusillanimity,  his  weakness,  and 
his  cowardice,  however,  that  we  are  indebted  for  the  mischiefs 
which  now  threaten  us.  The  effect  is  as  fatal  as  treason  itself. 
Instead  of  talking  of  concessions,  the  cry,  'To  arms/  should  ring 
out  from  this  point,  through  every  valley,  and  along  every  moun- 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  447 

tain  top  in  Pennsylvania.  If  we  hesitate  much  longer,  the 
programme  of  the  traitors  will  be  extended  from  Washington, 
to  Philadelphia  and  Harrisburg.  They  will  expect  the  former 
to  surrender  at  discretion.  What  kind  of  a  defense  we  shall 
make  here,  is  more  than  I  can  say. 

"And  now,  as  to  the  duties  of  our  own  great  State  in  this 
extremity.  No  petty  province  is  this,  which  we  represent  here 
this  day.  Pennsylvania — second  in  rank,  and  first,  as  I  think, 
in  position  and  power,  in  this  great  family  of  nations — stand 
ing  abreast  of  the  whole  advancing  column  of  the  Slave  States, 
with  one  foot  on  the  Atlantic  sea-board,  and  the  other  on  the 
tributaries  of  the  Mississippi — leaning  upon  the  shoulder  of 
her  first-born  offspring,  the  young  giant  of  the  West,  and  sup 
ported  in  her  rear  by  the  powerful  State  of  New  York — holds 
a  place  in  our  chart,  which  has  justly  earned  for  her  the  proud 
distinction  of  the  Keystone  of  the  Federal  Arch.  Nor  is  this 
any  mere  idle  party  designation.  It  has  a  higher  significance. 
It  is  her  place  in  history.  It  was  here  that  Great  Britain  struck, 
to  reach  the  heart  and  centre  of  the  great  confederacy  which 
rebelled  against  her  rule.  It  was  around  Philadelphia,  as  the 
pivotal  point,  that  the  tide  of  battle  rolled,  while  the  scales 
hung  doubtful,  in  the  darkest  hour  of  that  arduous  and  pro 
tracted  struggle.  It  was  to  save  Philadelphia,  that  the  blood  of 
our  Fathers  crimsoned  the  green  herbage,  on  the  pastoral  banks 
of  the  Brandywine.  It  was  to  save  Philadelphia,  that  the  same 
blood  flowed  anew,  amid  the  darkness  and  confusion  of  that 
disastrous  morning,  in  the  streets  of  Germantown.  I  have  a 
right  to  speak  of  it;  an  ancestor  of  my  own  was  there.  It  was 
to  relieve  Philadelphia,  that  the  American  army  wintered  on  the 
frozen  ground  at  Valley  Forge.  It  was  to  relieve  Philadelphia, 
that  the  same  army,  under  the  lead  of  its  great  chief,  turned 
upon  its  pursuers,  like  a  hunted  stag,  on  that  wintry  night,  when 
it  launched  itself  amongst  the  ice  drifts  of  the  Delaware,  and 
lighted  up  the  streets  of  Trenton,  and  the  hearts  of  the  Colonists, 
with  the  blaze  of  its  artillery.  Pennsylvania,  with  her  Western 
and  Northern  frontiers  a  wilderness,  was  the  Keystone  then. 
Pennsylvania,  with  her  Western  and  Northern  sons — a  mighty 
host,  made  rugged  by  toil,  trained  alike  to  the  use  of  the  rifle  and 
axe,  and  instinct  with  that  love  of  liberty,  which  animated  their 
Revolutionary  sires — Pennsylvania,  comprising  within  herself 
the  population,  and  more  than  the  power,  of  the  old  thirteen — 
is  the  Keystone  still,  in  war  as  well  as  in  peace.  While  she 
maintains  her  place,  that  arch  will  never  fall.  She  was  one  of 
the  first  to  put  her  name  to  that  solemn  league  and  covenant 
which  made  us  one  people.  The  smoke  of  battle  was  then  upon 


448  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

her  hands.  Those  hands  will  be  darker  yet,  and  redder  yet, 
before  she  will  permit  that  covenant  to  be  torn,  or  a  single  signa 
ture  erased. 

"Aside,  however,  from  these  responsibilities,  there  are  pecu 
liar  reasons,  which  make  it  her  duty  to  speak  out  now — not  in 
the  language  of  boastfulness,  for  that  would  not  become  her — 
but  of  stern  and  solemn  admonition.  The  administration  of 
the  affairs  of  this  great  nation  has  been  confided  to  the  keeping 
of  her  sons.  Pennsylvania  is  now  on  guard  at  the  Federal  Cap 
ital.  She  will  be  expected  to  stand  sponsor  for  their  loyalty. 
It  is  but  too  apparent  now,  that  they  have  brought  reproach 
upon  the  mother  that  bore  them,  by  the  betrayal  of  the  trust  that 
was  committed  to  their  hands.  The  President  of  the  United 
States,  or  at  least  the  constitutional  advisers  whom  he  has 
assembled  around  him,  have  been  openly  plotting  the  ruin  of 
this  Republic.  The  denial  of  the  right  to  coerce — the  deposit 
of  enormous  quantities  of  the  munitions  of  war  in  the  hands 
of  the  public  authorities  of  South  Carolina — the  refusal  to 
strengthen  the  defenses  of  the  National  fortresses — the  exposure 
of  a  mere  handful  of  men,  to  the  risk  of  butchery  by  an  excited 
mob,  in  the  face  of  a  community  which  had  given  public  notice 
of  its  intention  to  throw  off  its  allegiance — followed  by  the  dis 
graceful  necessity  of  a  backward  movement  in  the  face  of  a 
rebellious  subject,  so  contemptible  in  its  resources — and  the  out 
givings  of  the  traitors  themselves,  as  to  the  complicity  of  the 
President,  have  settled  this  question  beyond  a  controversy.  But 
this  is  not  all.  The  opinion  of  the  President  and  his  Attorney 
General  (now  Secretary  of  State)  are  supposed  to  be  a  reflex  of 
the  opinions  of  the  people  here.  It  has  been  confidently  asserted, 
and  believed  at  Washington,  that  our  own  great  State  will 
follow  the  malcontents  in  their  Hegira,  and  haul  down  that 
glorious  banner,  upon  which  her  own  star  is  one  of  the  fairest 
and  the  brightest.  With  the  estimate  formed  by  these  madmen 
of  the  free  laboring  men  of  the  North,  it  is  as  confidently 
expected,  that  the  suspension  of  commercial  intercourse  with 
them,  will  beggar  our  mechanics  and  operatives — that  famine 
and  destitution,  gaunt  and  haggard,  will  stalk  naked  but  armed, 
through  our  streets,  clamoring  for  bread — that  our  warehouses 
will  be  sacked,  and  our  printing  presses  destroyed,  and  that  we 
shall  be  driven  again  into  their  arms  to  escape  a  still  greater 
calamity ;  and  the  tone  of  the  late  Philadelphia  meeting,  and  the 
obvious  terror  and  self-abasement  which  pervaded  it,  are  taken 
as  the  evidences  that  we  are  all  trembling  in  apprehension  of 
these  results.  And  these,  it  seems,  are  the  motives  to  rebellion — 
these,  the  hopes  that  animate  the  madmen,  who  would  fire  the 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  449 

temple  of  our  liberties,  and  reduce  it  to  a  ruin.  If  this  be  so,  it 
is  time  to  undeceive  them  for  their  own  sakes,  by  teaching  them 
that  Pennsylvania  will  stand,  as  she  has  ever  stood,  by  the  Union 
of  these  States — that  upon  this  question,  we  shall  be,  as  we  have 
ever  been,  a  united  people — and  that  the  laboring  men  of  Penn 
sylvania,  instead  of  being  the  white  slaves — the  hungry  mob — 
which  they  suppose,  are  men  and  freemen — intelligent,  self- 
reliant  and  independent,  and  able,  not  only  to  earn  their  bread 
and  vindicate  their  rights,  but  to  resent  and  punish,  if  necessary, 
the  insult  and  contumely  to  which  they  have  been  thus  sub 
jected,  with  the  strong  arms  which  God  Almighty  has  given 
them.  On  such  a  question  as  this,  I  would  not  insult  my  auditors 
by  any  party  appeal.  I  sink  all  party  distinctions  in  the  presence 
of  the  great  overshadowing  issue  which  involves  the  preserva 
tion  of  that  Union,  which  is  our  common  safeguard  and  our 
common  inheritance.  It  is  our  Democratic  brethren  of  this  State, 
who  are  insulted  by  these  suspicions  of  disloyalty.  I  do  not 
entertain  them.  I  assume  that  every  honest,  true-hearted  mem 
ber  of  that  party,  is  as  much  attached  to  the  Union  as  I  am.  The 
recent  excitement  in  Pittsburgh,  has  furnished  the  proof  of  it 
there.  If  disunion  purposes  were  charged  in  the  call  of  the 
Chicago  Convention,  it  was  not  upon  any  voter  of  the  North. 
It  was  to  the  Southern  leaders  of  that  party  only,  that  such 
treasonable  sentiments  were  imputed.  They  affirmed  the  charge, 
by  refusing  to  co-operate  with  their  Northern  brethren,  and  rent 
their  party  in  twain,  to  accomplish  their  traitorous  purpose  of 
dismembering  the  Union.  It  was  that  conviction  that  palsied  the 
arm  of  the  Northern  Democrat.  It  was  his  unfortunate  associa 
tion  \vith  the  apostles  of  secession,  that  broke  up  the  power  of 
that  once  formidable  organization  in  the  Free  States.  The  Repub 
licans  took  advantage  of  it,  and  went  into  the  battle  with  the 
device  emblazoned  on  the  standard,  'The  Union  of  these  States 
must  and  shall  be  preserved.'  That  was  their  tower  of  strength. 
That  was  their  labarum.  It  was  by  that  sign  they  conquered.  It 
was  by  the  magnetic  force  of  that  appeal  to  the  strongest  instinct 
of  the  American  heart,  that  they  drew  the  very  bolts  and  rivets 
which  held  that  organization  together.  I  trust  the  Democratic 
party  here  will  profit  by  this  experience.  The  award  of  the 
ballot-box  was  but  the  declaration  of  the  people,  that  this  Union 
must  be  preserved,  and  woe  to  him  who  shall  undertake  to  gain 
say  it,  or  to  make  it  void. 

"But  it  will  not  be  made  void.  It  is  not  in  the  order  of  Prov 
idence  that  this  great  nation  shall  perish  on  the  very  threshold 
of  its  high  career.  It  has  just  expanded  its  wing  for  a  flight  of 
centuries.  No  man  can  read  the  story  of  its  birth,  without  seeing 


45O  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

the  finger  of  a  superintending  Providence,  directing  its  path 
through  darkness  and  disaster,  as  distinctly  as  the  beacon  light 
which  flamed  in  the  midnight  heavens  in  advance  of  the  armies 
of  Israel.  No  man  can  look  back  upon  its  progress,  and  realize 
the  blessings  which  it  has  already  conferred  upon  man,  and  the 
still  greater  blessings  which  it  foreshadows,  and  then  sit  down  in 
gloomy  skepticism  as  to  its  future  without  a  doubt  whether  the 
same  Providence  still  continues  to  govern  the  affairs  of  this 
world.  It  may  have  its  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  like  all  things 
human.  The  flag  of  our  Union  may  plunge  behind  the  storm- 
cloud,  and  bury  itself  occasionally  in  the  bosom  of  the  tempest, 
but  it  will  emerge  again — that  glorious  emblem  of  our  power 
— it  will  emerge  again — that  constellation  of  our  hope — from 
the  darkness  that  may  overshadow  it — refulgent  as  with  the 
splendors  of  a  new  dawn — flinging  off  the  vapors  which  have 
hung  about  its  folds,  and  hanging  out,  as  of  old,  its  signal  of 
hope,  ana  freedom,  and  deliverance  to  the  nations.  A  hundred 
generations  shall  yet  sit  down  under  its  shadow,  and  bless  the 
hands  that  reared  and  the  hands  that  have  defended  it." 

When  he  finished  even  one  of  his  opponents,  who 
bore  a  distinguished  Philadelphia  name,  described  his 
remarks  as  an  "elegant,  refined  and  eloquent  exordium," 
and  himself  as  "so  overwhelmingly  powerful  in  oratory." 
The  Philadelphian  had,  himself,  proposed  resolutions 
looking  to  the  repeal  of  the  Pennsylvania  law  against 
fugitive  slave  hunting,  claimed  to  be  unconstitutional 
by  the  South  and  a  violation  of  the  Federal  compact. 
It  was  believed  that  if  this  wras  repealed  the  seceding 
States  would  return.  The  effort  to  secure  this  result  was 
the  one  Mr.  Williams'  oration  aimed  to  defeat,  and 
as  the  movement  had  its  most  influential  leadership, 
probably,  in  Philadelphia,  Mr.  Williams  made  this  special 
attack  on  that  element,  and  another  member  from 
the  metropolis,  in  return,  on  the  2ist  of  January,  twitted 
the  Pittsburgh  orator  on  leading  that  city  in  repudiation 
of  some  of  the  bonds  held  by  the  speaker's  own  constitu 
ents.  The  reference  struck  as  fine  fire  from  the  Alleghe- 
nian's  flint  as  it  ever  gave  off  probably,  at  least  in  retort. 

"In  the  Philadelphia  Ledger  of  Saturday,"  said  an 
editorial  in  the  Pittsburgh  Evening  Chronicle,  "we  find  a 
report  of  the  speech  of  Mr.  Williams,  in  reply  to  an 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  451 

attack    made    on    the    people   of    Allegheny    county    by    Mr. 

of   Philadelphia,   which  seems  to  have  made  a  deep 

impression  on  our  Eastern  friends.  We  subjoin  a  passage  or 
two.  Alluding  to  the  charge  of  being  repudiators,  made  against 
our  people,  Mr.  W.  argued  to  show  that  they  were  right  in  their 
opposition  to  the  railroad  tax,  and  then  said:  'But  let  us  see 
how  Philadelphia  acted  in  these  cases  herself.  She  has  obliga 
tions  herself.  She  has  two  millions  and  a  quarter  in  the  Sunbury 
and  Erie  Railroad.  It  is  a  bad  investment.  What  does  she  do? 
The  Board  of  Trade  meet  and  pass  resolutions,  (I  gleaned  the 
facts  from  the  public  newspapers,  and  may  not  state  them  with 
entire  accuracy,  but  I  can  give  their  substances),  declaring  that 
the  investment  will  be  lost  unless  they  can  obtain  relief  from  the 
State;  and  the  means  devised  was  the  appropriation  of  one-half 
of  your  public  works  to  that  purpose,  after  the  other  half  had 
been  given  to  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company,  of  which 
that  city  was  the  largest  proprietor — one-half  of  whose  capital 
stock  she  herself  owned.  Well,  sir,  she  votes  these  public 
improvements  into  her  own  pocket.  She  commands  some  seven 
teen  votes  in  the  House ;  and  I  do  not  undertake  to  say  how  many 
in  the  Senate ;  she  has  made  a  bad  investment ;  she  comes  to  the 
State  for  relief ;  she  plunges  her  hand  into  the  treasury  and  helps 
herself.  Now,  when  my  Philadelphia  friends  talk  to  me  of  "repu- 
diation,"  may  I  not  well  remind  them  of  the  fact  that  they  make 
good  their  own  bad  investments  and  pay  their  own  debts,  by  plun 
dering  the  treasury  ?  May  I  not  say  to  them  with  regard  to  their 
votes,  as  Falstaff  said  to  Prince  Henry  on  a  memorable  occa 
sion,  "When  you  are  King,  Hal,  rob  me  the  exchequer."  With 
the  same  means  and  appliances  we  could  pay  our  debts  too.  Have 
they  a  right,  however,  to  reproach  us?' 

"The  Ledger  seems  greatly  pleased  with  Mr.  W.'s  remarks, 
and  alludes  to  them  in  complimentary  terms.  Referring  to  the 
discussion,  it  says  Mr.  W.  made  a  'reply  which,  for  power,  elo 
quence  and  able  reasoning,  is  seldom  excelled  in  any  legislative 
body.  The  bold  stand  he  takes  for  the  right  and  authority  of  the 
people  over  their  own  property,  and  against  unconstitutional 
enactments,  which  would  deprive  them  of  it,  is  worthy  of  Patrick 
Henry  himself.  It  is  rare  that  such  speeches  are  heard  in  the 
Legislature  of  this  State.  If  there  were  more  of  the  same  spirit, 
and  the  same  recurrence  to  fundamental  principles  of  popular 
rights,  which  underlie  all  constitutions,  we  should  not  have  the 
Legislature  so  frequently  usurping  power  not  delegated  to  it  by 
the  Constitution,  nor  Courts  coming  in  conflict  with  public  senti 
ment  founded  upon  common  sense,  common  honesty  and  common 
liberty.  Hitherto  we  have  differed  from  Mr.  Williams  in  regard 


452  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

to  the  obligation  upon  Allegheny  to  pay  the  bonds  it  issued, 
because  they  were  issued  under  the  forms  of  law  by  legally 
authorized  persons.  But  there  is  no  logic  like  the  logic  of  facts, 
and  the  most  certain  way  of  seeing  the  force  and  bearing  of  a 
principle  is  to  have  it  applied  to  oneself.  The  city  of  Philadel 
phia  would  this  day  have  had  three  millions  of  dollars  added  to 
its  present  debt  by  the  act  of  its  County  Commissioners,  in  lend 
ing  out  of  the  county  treasury  that  amount  to  the  Sunbury  and 
Erie  Railroad,  if  the  timely  interposition  of  the  people  in  town 
meeting  had  not  stopped  this  usurped  authority.  In  fact,  radical 
and  fundamental  principles  of  right,  when  wrested  by  power 
from  the  people,  are  always  stolen  from  them  under  the  forms  of 
law,  and,  for  the  peace  and  security  of  society,  there  ought  to  be 
some  remedy  short  of  revolution  to  arrest  acts  of  unauthorized 
power."1 

Mr.  Williams  voted  against  the  Virginia  convention, 
as  an  unconstitutional  thing — that  no  State  could  make 
a  compact  with  any  other  State — and  on  February  ist 
raised  his  voice  for  offering  a  prepared  militia  to  the 
government  at  once,  as  the  South  was  preparing  for  war. 
To  realize  the  standing  Mr.  Williams  had  won  by  this 
time  needs  but  a  glance  at  a  paragraph  of  the  report  of 
the  correspondent  of  the  Philadelphia  Evening  Bulletin 
on  February  8th : 

1  The  entire  speech,  which,  because  of  the  exigencies  of  space,  must  be 
omitted,  may  be  seen  in  the  Legislative  Record  for  1861  on  pp.  156-7-8.  The 
whole  address  is  broad,  high-minded  and  conciliatory,  and  it  is  unfortunate  that, 
for  the  sake  of  showing  the  Ledger's  attitude,  only  a  small  part  can  be  quoted. 
The  quotation  does  not  do  justice  to  its  statesmanlike  poise.  It  was  in  this 
that  he  referred  to  the  bond  question  as  "that  greatest  of  questions,  which 
constitutes  my  mission  here." 

The  Harrisburg  correspondent  of  the  North  American  and  United  States 
Gazette  of  January  i8th  says:  "Copies  of  the  London  American,  [December  i8th] 
brought  over  by  the  last  steamer,  have  been  passing  about  the  House  and 
have  been  very  eagerly  read.  They  contain  a  letter  written  by  Thomas  Wil 
liams  of  Pittsburgh,  to  Captain  Schenley,  of  the  English  army.  It  has  been 
very  generally  read  and  commanded  high  encomiums  for  the  remarkable  clear 
ness  of  style  and  the  force  of  its  statements.  It  is  a  resume  of  the  history  of  the 
leading  events,  both  military  and  civil,  which  have  occurred  since  the  breaking 
out  of  the  rebellion  up  to  just  before  the  meeting  of  Congress.  He  was  most 
heartily  congratulated  upon  all  sides  by  his  fellow  members  of  the  House." 
A  copy  of  the  article,  which  occupies  a  page  and  a  quarter,  is  among  the 
Williams  papers,  and  abundantly  warrants  the  above  expressions  about  it. 
Even  at  this  distance  of  time  it  is  remarkable  for  its  judicial,  impartial  tone. 
In  a  letter  of  December  10,  1861,  Captain  Schenley  says  the  London  Time? 
wanted  the  letter,  "but  that  paper  has  to  my  mind  behaved  so  shamefully 
throughout  the  American  difficulty  that  I  flatly  refused  a  document  at  once 
so  valuable  and  so  convincing."  In  another  letter  he  states  that  he  showed 
the  letter  to  Lord  Palmerston  and  Sir  John  Russell,  who  were  much  impressed 
by  it. 

A  letter  of  January  26,  1861,  shows  that  Lincoln,  through  his  law  partner, 
who  came  on  to  Harrisburg  to  discuss  the  matter  of  a  place  in  the  Cabinet 
for  Cameron,  sought  Mr.  Williams'  advice,  urging  him  to  express  himself  in  a 
private  letter.  Williams  said  he  didn't  know  Lincoln;  the  reply  was:  "He 
knows  you  very  well." 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  453 

"I  shall  begin  with  Williams,  of  Allegheny,"  he  wrote,  "called 
popularly  in  your  city,  the  'Great  Repudiator.'  As  all  know,  who 
have  heard  of  him,  he  is  a  lawyer  by  profession,  and  has  been 
at  the  bar  about  thirty  years.  Born  in  Westmoreland  County,  he 
long  since  removed  to  Pittsburgh.  Standing  at  the  bar  of  that 
city  as  one  of  its  prominent  lawyers,  and  devoting  himself 
earnestly  to  his  profession,  he  has  never  until  now  held  any  pub 
lic  position,  save  a  three  years'  term  he  served  in  the  Senate  full 
twenty  years  ago.  In  that  body  he  held  a  leading  position,  when 
Judge  Pearson,  Charles  Sullivan,  Frederick  Fraley,  'Harry' 
Spackman,  Charles  Brown,  and  men  of  that  class  led  in  its 
debates. 

"In  person  he  is  of  medium  height,  with  no  particular  indica 
tion  of  muscular  power,  although  he  must  be  possessed  of  a  very 
good  constitution.  He  is  fifty-three  or  four  years  of  age,  and 
though  his  hair  and  beard  are  tinged  with  gray,  he  would  pass 
anywhere  for  forty-five.  His  eyes  are  of  bluish  gray,  large  and 
full ;  his  face  round,  and  surmounted  with  a  protuberant  nose, 
decidedly  inclined  to  point  to  the  left.  The  forehead  is  fuller  in 
the  region  of  ideality  and  marvellousness  than  it  is  in  the  locale 
of  the  perceptive  and  reflective  faculties.  The  head  is  not  very 
large,  and  in  this  particular  is  a  contradiction  to  the  phrenolog 
ical  theory  that  minds  of  large  powers  must  have  a  large  devel 
opment  of  brain. 

"As  a  speaker  his  elocution  is  not  graceful,  and  his  voice, 
though  powerful,  is  not  musical.  To  wonderful  command  of 
language  he  adds  great  beauty  and  choice  of  diction ;  his  phrases 
abounding  with  classical  allusions,  seeming  to  bubble  up  to  the 
surface ;  his  argument  is  compact  and  tersely  logical,  seldom 
wandering  aside  to  indulge  in  rhetorical  episodes  when  he  enters 
upon  his  themes ;  they  seem  to  form  a  necessary  illustration  of 
the  point  he  is  endeavoring  to  make.  Such  is  one  of  the  most 
powerful  of  the  men  now  leading  our  State  Councils." 

This  is  followed  by  accounts  of  Ball  of  Erie,  Arm 
strong  of  Lycoming  and  Gordon  of  Jefferson,  of  whom 
Ball  was  the  chief  parliamentarian  of  the  House.1 

1  The  North  American  and  United  States  Gazette  correspondent  on  February 
ist  said  of  Mr.  Williams  that:  "His  recent  exhibitions  as  a  forensic  gladiator 
have  left  more  than  one  black  eye  right  and  left,  and  his  enemies  will  punish 
him  severely  when  they  get  him  across  the  rope."  This  was  in  regard  to  a 
general  desire  to  have  him  on  the  investigating  committee.  He  says  the 
judiciary  committee  is  where  the  real  battle  will  be  fought,  and  that  it 
embrace'd  the  very  first  talent  in  that  body— Scott,  Williams,  Smith  of  Chester, 
Shannon,  Strang,  Banks,  Vincent,  Brown  of  Northumberland  and  Dennis. 
He  .said  if  Campbell  or  Cuyler,  the  railway  counsel,  came  up  they  would,  no 
doubt,  "prepare  for  death,  solemnly,  religiously,  for  if  Williams  should  put  on 
his  leonine  mood  they  will  vanish  from  earth  and  leave  not  a  wreck  behind." 

Tn   a  letter  dated   February  10,    1861.    Mr.   Williams   says   of  Governor   Curtin: 
"He   does   not  pull   with   the   Republican   wing   of   our   party   &  has   lost   their 


454  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

The  real  fight  of  the  session  began  on  February  I5th 
with  consideration  of  the  two  railway  measures.  It  is 
not  the  purpose  here  to  enter  into  details  of  the  contest. 
The  railway  interests  secured  their  votes  early  and 
rushed  the  measure  through — as  was  evident  it  was  to  be 
done — early  in  the  session.  The  question,  as  well  as  the 
means  taken  to  accomplish  this  result,  aroused  Mr. 
Williams  to  the  utmost,  especially  the  points  at  issue 
in  the  repeal  or  ''commutation"  of  the  tonnage  tax 
imposed  on  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad.  "My  friend  from 
Philadelphia,"  said  Mr.  Williams,  "*  *  *  even  goes 
so  far  as  to  complain  of  the  persecution  with  which  this 
unfortunate  company,  receiving  a  revenue  greater  than 
that  of  the  whole  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania  has 
been  followed !  This  company  which  sits  here  at  Harris- 
burg  enthroned  in  State  with  its  agents  and  its  emis 
saries  filling  your  public  houses  and  your  lobbies  to  dic 
tate  to  this  Legislature  what  they  shall  do  and  when  they 
shall  do  it  and  how  they  shall  do  it,  is  certainly  not  by 
any  means  an  object  of  sympathy."  "I  was  amazed,"  he 
says  again,  "when  I  saw  this  bill  reported  by  a  Committee 
of  this  House,  proposing  upon  its  face,  amongst  other 
things,  to  donate  to  a  mammoth  corporation  eight 
hundred  thousand  dollars  of  your  money,  already 
sacredly  appropriated  to  the  purposes  of  the  sinking  fund, 
to  the  payment  of  the  public  debt  of  this  State.  And  then 
this  money  is  to  be  lent  out  by  this  grand  monopoly  to 
this  railroad  and  that  railroad  by  way  of  securing  the 
votes  of  members  from  the  counties  through  which  these 
railroads  pass — a  tub  thrown  to  the  whale."  Again  he 
says :  "You  may  do  this  thing  and  you  may  do  it  in  a 
hurry.  Perhaps  it  is  policy  that  you  should  do  it  thus. 
Put  this  bill  upon  the  files,  wait  a  few  days,  and  there  will 
be  a  storm  of  indignation  burst  up  from  every  quarter  of 
this  Commonwealth  that  will  shake  the  Capitol  to  its 
foundation."1 

confidence  because  he  has  taken  counsel  entirely  with  the  people's  party— which 
votes  generally  with  the  Democrats."  In  the  same  letter  he  tells  of  invitations 
from  various  parts  of  the  State  to  address  them,  the  leader  of  one  deputation 
attempting  to  reach  Mr.  Williams'  heart  by  repeating  the  entire  exordium  of 
his  eulogy  on  President  Harrison! 
1  Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.  375. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  455 

"This  case  has  a  history,"  said  he  in  the  same  speech,  "with 
which  my  worthy  friend  [from  Philadelphia]  is  not  perhaps 
familiar.  I  recollect  something  about  it,  although  my  memory 
is  not  a  good  one.  When  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  made  its 
application  for  this  charter  that  application  arose  out  of  a 
feeling  of  rivalry  and  competition  between  the  two  cities  of 
Philadelphia  and  Baltimore.  Philadelphia  had  no  idea  of 
building  such  a  road;  but  Baltimore  came  here  to  obtain  a 
renewal  of  the  charter  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad 
Company,  which  would  have  furnished  another  and  independent 
means  of  communication,  giving  to  the  city  of  Baltimore,  how 
ever,  some  advantage  over  Philadelphia.  Philadelphia  resisted; 
she  offered  to  build  a  railroad  of  this  description  herself.  She 
offered  in  addition  thereto,  looking  to  the  probable  rivalry  and 
the  injury  that  might  be  sustained  by  the  Public  Works  in  con 
sequence  thereof — she  offered  to  pay  a  revenue  of  five  mills 
upon  the  dollar,  upon  all  tonnage  carried  over  that  road  for 
ever.  I  think  I  am  not  mistaken  in  saying  it  was  five  mills;  it 
is  now  three.  It  was  her  own  offer,  and  she  succeeded  by  these 
means  in  procuring  the  charter,  and  in  defeating  the  applica 
tion  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Company  to  obtain  a 
right  of  way  through  this  State.  The  jealousy  of  Philadelphia 
defeated  that  application.  She  obtained  all  she  desired  upon 
those  grounds.  We  were  shut  out ;  we  were  denied  the  privilege 
of  taking  any  other  means  of  transmit  to  the  eastern  sea-board, 
except  those  to  be  furnished  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Company.  There  was  a  provision,  if  I  recollect  aright,  in  the 
charter  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company,  enacted  in 
1846,  that  if  they  would  put  under  contract  in  good  faith,  so 
many  miles  of  their  road  adjacent  to  the  city  of  Pittsburgh,  (I 
do  not  recollect  the  number  of  miles,)  then  all  the  privileges 
granted  by  an  Act  passed  at  the  same  session,  should  cease. 
They  did  put  their  road  under  contract  for  that  purpose." 

"Sir,"  said  he  farther  on,  after  he  had  shown  how  these 
funds  had  been  pledged  to  the  public  debt,  "I  dread  the  power  of 
this  corporation.  I  was  in  public  life  when  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States  was  described  as  a  monster,  an  anaconda — when 
our  Democratic  brethren  were  in  the  habit  of  expressing  the 
opinion  that  it  was  winding  its  snaky  coils  around  us,  strangling 
us  to  death  as  the  serpent  strangled  Laocoon.1  Now,  what  have 
we  here?  Why,  this  immense  corporation  overshadowing  the 
whole  State — binding  with  an  iron  chain,  the  city  of  Phila 
delphia  and  the  city  of  Pittsburgh — with  all  its  ramifications,  and 


Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.  376. 


456  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

its  proposed  execution  of  ramifications — dwarfs  that  monster 
bank  into  nothingness.  It  can  bring  enough  of  its  troops  here 
to  invade  the  Capitol,  and  I  was  almost  disposed  to  say,  to 
defend  this  State  in  a  case  of  invasion  from  the  South.  If  we 
are  helpless  this  company  is  not. 

"I  dread  this  irresponsible  power,  which  overshadows  this 
State  and  dwarfs  everything  beneath  it.  I  think  our  liberties 
are  not  safe  under  such  influences.  I  think  the  time  has  come 
to  summon  the  people  of  Pennsylvania  to  the  rescue,  to  pro 
claim  the  alarm  from  the  top  of  this  Capitol  in  such  a  way  that 
it  shall  reach  every  hill  and  valley  in  this  Commonwealth.  The 
people  will  respond  to  that  call — my  life  on  it." 

Again  he  says: 

"The  learned  gentleman  is  pleased  to  charge  me  with  hos 
tility  to  this  company.  Why,  sir,  I  entertain  no  feeling  of  that 
sort;  but  if  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  or  any  other 
railroad  company  in  this  State  embarks  upon  a  grand  scheme 
of  public  robbery — so  long  as  I  am  here,  as  the  representative 
of  the  people,  though  I  stand  in  the  breach  alone,  as  Horatius 
stood  in  the  breach  at  Rome,  I  shall  be  at  all  times  ready  to 
defend  the  people — not  the  people  whom  I  immediately  repre 
sent,  but  the  people  of  the  State  at  large.  But  from  the 
language  in  which  the  gentleman  indulges,  I  suppose  it  is  to 
be  considered  that  an  offense  against  that  company  is  something- 
like  \vhat  lawyers  call  the  crimen  loesis  magistatis — that  is,  the 
offense  of  treason.  It  is  the  majesty  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail 
road  Company  which  overshadows  this  Commonwealth,  against 
which  I,  an  humble  individual,  have  ventured  to  rebel.  That 
is  my  crime.  Therefore,  it  is  that  my  worthy  friend  from 
Schuylkill  thinks  I  am  not  quite  so  wise  a  man  as  I  ought  to 
be,  or  not  quite  so  wise  as  himself. 

"Well,  sir,  I  owe  no  favors  to  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Company.  I  have  tried  causes  for  them  occasionally,  and  they 
have  paid  me,  and  the  account  was  squared.  I  do  not  travel 
upon  their  free  tickets — not  because  they  do  not  offer  them  to 
me,  but  because  as  a  member  of  the  Legislature  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  I  feel  that  I  cannot  do  it  so  long  as  they  are  knocking 
at  your  doors  and  begging  for  favors,  however  small  they  may 
be.  This  refusal  on  my  part  is  no  evidence  of  hostility ;  but 
it  is  evidence  of  a  desire  simply  to  keep  myself  in  such  a 
position  as  to  enable  me  to  do  them  justice  without  the  suspicion 
of  bias."1 

1  Ibid.,  p.  381. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  457 

At  the  close  of  a  long  and  able  speech,  to  which 
extracts  cannot  do  justice,  he  exclaimed :  "My  own  hands 
shall  not  be  stained  with  it."  The  bill  was  passed  by  a 
vote  of  60  to  38.  "The  great  fight  over  the  passage  of  the 
two  great  financial  measures  of  the  session  is  over  in  the 
House,"  wrote  the  correspondent  of  the  North  American 
and  United  States  Gazette  of  Philadelphia  on  February 
i6th.  "The  debate  was,  at  many  of  its  stages,  very  excit 
ing  and  very  interesting.  Williams  of  Allegheny  was 
the  chief  debater  in  opposition  to  both,  but  his  opposition 
to  the  Sunbury  and  Erie  bill  was  less  marked  and  bitter 
than  it  was  to  the  tonnage  tax.  Against  the  latter  he 
showed  a  virulence  that  was  remarkable  for  its  intensity. 
There  is  no  use  in  denying  his  ability  as  a  speaker.  He  is 
beyond  all  question  the  most  accomplished  intellectual 
athlete  in  either  House.  Had  he  possessed  half  the  skill 
'to  filibuster,'  under  the  rules,  which  he  evinced  in  argu 
ment,  he  would  have  held  those  two  bills  at  bay  for  a 
week.  But  he  is  either  too  high-minded  to  condescend 
to  parliamentary  strategy  for  mere  purposes  of  delay,  or 
he  does  not  understand  very  well  legislative  maneuver 
ing.  Had  Ball  been  assisting  him  the  Sunbury  and  Erie 
would  yet  have  been  hanging  fire  in  Committee  of  the 
Whole." 

The  arguments  on  the  other  side  have  not  been  given, 
because  no  reader  of  to-day,  in  Pennsylvania  at  least, 
needs  them,  any  more  than  a  citizen  of  Germany  needs 
arguments  for  favoring  their  army,  or  an  Englishman 
needs  them  to  warrant  his  vote  to  favor  their  navy.  The 
dominant  elements  in  all  three  lands  are  determined  to 
have  these  things  and  to  care  for  their  welfare,  at  any  cost.1 
The  tonnage  tax  was,  of  course,  considered  a  menace  to 
the  entry  of  outside  freight  into  the  State.  The  dominant 
forces  in  the  Senate,  led  by  McClure  within  and  President 
Scott  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  without,  with  all  the 
measures  known  to  the  politics  of  that  day — as  well  as 
some  other  days — soon  secured  its  passage  there. 

1  Colonel  McClure  himself  has  given  the  general  tenor  of  the  arguments 
used  on  the  railway  side  in  his  interesting  series  of  articles  on  Pennsylvania 
politics,  at  this  writing  current  in  the  Philadelphia  Press  and  Pittsburgh  Gazette. 
He  shows  Senator  Penny  of  Pittsburgh,  who  was  to  the  Senate  on  this  question 
what  Williams  was  to  the  House,  to  have  been  a  powerful  leader. 


458  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Scott  was  one  of  the  "men  who  do  things,"  and  it  was 
well  known,  as  Colonel  McClure  has  stated  in  a  recent 
conversation,  that  persuadable  men  were  secured  by  the 
railway  interests  by  the  means  that  would  secure  them 
whenever  it  was  necessary.  It  was  political  warfare. 
These  events  and  the  contemporary  railroad  bond  cases 
in  the  Supreme  Court  led  to  petitions  from  the  people 
over  the  State  in  protest  against  this  action,  and  some 
petitions  even  went  so  far  as  to  call  for  the  removal  of 
the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court.  "Mountains,"  the 
'correspondent  of  the  North  American  and  United  States 
Gazette,  said,  on  the  i6th,  that  there  would  be  something 
interesting  on  in  a  few  days.  "I  refer,"  said  he,  "to  the 
presentation  of  an  address  by  Mr.  Williams  of  Allegheny, 
for  removal  of  the  Supreme  Judges."  One  of  the 
petitions,  namely,  from  Washington  County,  called  the 
doctrines  of  the  judges  "immoral,  incendiary  and  revolu 
tionary."  The  public  feeling  was  so  great  that  many  a 
legislator  grew  apprehensive  when  he  thought  of  his  first 
meeting  with  his  constituents.  It  was  plain  that  the 
battle  was  only  begun. 

National  affairs,  meanwhile,  produced  a  cessation  of 
hostilities.  The  new  President-elect  was  on  his  way 
East,  and  by  the  I3th  a  committee  of  twelve,  six  from 
each  House,  Mr.  Williams  among  them,  had  been 
appointed  to  go  West  and  meet  Mr.  Lincoln  to  extend  an 
invitation  to  visit  the  Legislature.  They  met  him  at 
Rochester,  about  thirty  miles  below  Pittsburgh,  and 
escorted  him  into  the  latter  city,  which  they  reached  at 
8  P.  M.  on  the  I4th.  The  committee  returned  and 
announced  a  visit  for  the  22d,  Washington's  Birthday. 
"The  members  speak  of  him,"  wrote  a  correspondent  for  a 
Philadelphia  paper,  "as  a  man  of  the  most  frank  and  open 
character,  as  having  no  pretension  to  style  in  dress  or 
elegance  of  manner,  though  he  does  not  lack  refinement 
or  courtesy.  A  member  of  the  committee  declares  that  he 
is  a  most  diffident  man."1  About  a  week  later  he  arrived 
and  participated  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  first  President's 
birthday.  It  was  in  the  Hall  of  Representatives.  After 

1  "Mountains,"  in  the  North  American  and  United  States  Gazette  of  February 
16,  1861.  Philadelphia  Library. 


PRESIDENT-ELECT  LINCOLN 

Halftone  of  a  contemporary  photograph  by  Brady 

negative  in  possession  of  L.  C.  Handy, 

Washington,   I).  C. 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  459 

official  greetings  the  tall  westerner  arose  and,  after  refer 
ence  to  his  visit  in  Philadelphia,  said : 

''Under  the  kind  conduct  of  gentlemen  there,  I  was,  for  the 
first  time,  allowed  the  privilege  of  standing  in  old  Independence 
Hall  [enthusiastic  cheering],  and  to  have  a  few  words  addressed 
to  me  there,  affording  me  an  opportunity  of  expressing  myself. 
I  regret  that  I  had  not  more  time  to  express  something  of 
my  own  feelings,  excited  by  the  occasion — something  to  har 
monize  and  give  shape  to  the  sentiments  that  had  really  been 
the  sentiments  of  my  whole  life.  Besides  this  our  friends  there 
had  provided  a  magnificent  flag  of  our  country,  and  had 
arranged  it  so  that  I  was  given  the  honor  of  raising  it  to  the 
head  of  the  staff.  [Applause.]  And  when  it  went  up  I  was 
pleased  that  it  went  to  its  place  by  the  strength  of  my  own 
feeble  arm  when,  according  to  the  arrangement,  the  cord  was 
pulled,  and  it  flaunted  gloriously  to  the  wind,  without  an  acci 
dent,  in  the  light-glowing  sunshine  of  the  morning.  I  could 
not  help  hoping  that  there  was  in  the  entire  success  of  that 
beautiful  ceremony  at  least  something  of  an  omen  of  what  is 
to  come.  [Loud  applause.]  Nor  could  I  help  feeling  then,  as 
I  often  have  felt,  in  the  whole  of  that  proceeding  I  was  a  very 
humble  instrument.  I  had  not  provided  the  flag;  I  had  not 
made  the  arrangement  for  elevating  it  to  its  place ;  I  had 
applied  a  very  small  portion  even  of  my  feeble  strength  in 
raising  it.  In  the  whole  transaction  I  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
people  who  had  arranged  it,  and  if  I  can  have  the  same  gener 
ous  co-operation  of  the  people  of  the  entire  nation,  I  think  the 
flag  of  our  country  may  yet  be  kept  flaunting  gloriously." 
[Enthusiastic  and  prolonged  cheering.]1 

It  was  well  known  that  Mr.  Lincoln's  party  and  repre 
sentatives  of  the  committee  were  to  leave  for  Washington 
the  next  morning,  and  never  perhaps  were  greater  precau 
tions  taken  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  connect 
ing  lines ;  but  some  sudden  developments  of  a  threatening 
nature  at  Baltimore  became  known  and  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
taken  by  another  route  during  the  night,  while  Mrs. 
Lincoln,  Mr.  Williams'  two  daughters,  General  Sumner, 
Judge  Davis,  Captain  Pope  and  the  four  young  men, 
"Bob"  Lincoln,  John  Hay,  John  G.  Nicolai  and  Colonel 
Ellsworth,  with  Mr.  Williams  and  other  members  of 

1  The  same  evening  a  reception  was  held  at  the  hotel  in  Harrisburg  by 
Mr.  Lincoln,  where  the  two  daughters  of  Mr.  Williams  met  Mrs.  Lincoln,  who 
requested  him  to  allow  the  young  ladies  to  accompany  the  party  to  Washing 
ton. 


460  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  committee,  went  on  the  regularly  arranged  train 
the  next  morning.1  The  few  days  to  March  4th 
sped  rapidly  and  there  came  the  inauguration.  Mr. 
Williams  and  his  daughters,  as  Air.  Lincoln's  personal 
guests,  enjoyed  intimate  views  of  it.  They  heard  the 
famous  inaugural  address,  and  it  must  have  been  an 
interesting  moment  to  Mr.  Williams  when  the  venerable 
Chief  Justice  Taney — an  old  Dickinson  College  alumnus 
— arose  in  evident  agitation  to  administer  the  oath  of 
office  to  the  first  Republican  President,  and  might  have 
recalled  how  since  he  was  raised  to  eminence  by 
Jackson  he  had  sworn  in  a  long  line  of  Democratic  Chief 
Executives — Van  Buren,  Tyler,  Polk,  Taylor,  Fillmore, 
Pierce  and  Buchanan — and  this  last  oath  was  to  be  one 
which  should  not  only  sound  the  death-knell  of  the  Chief 
Justice's  party's  supremacy  for  many  a  long  day  to  come, 
but  assure  a  fearful  civil  war  in  the  very  words  of  the 
oath  itself. 

The  inaugural  ball  brought  out  an  amusing  incident 
that  illustrates  the  absentmindedness  of  Mr.  Williams  as 
well  as  his  dependence  upon  his  wife  in  matters  of  dress. 
The  President's  set,  in  the  opening  quadrille,  was  com 
posed  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lincoln,  Mr.  Williams  and  his 
daughter,  Miss  M.  D.  Williams,  "Bob"  Lincoln  and  Mr. 
Williams'  other  daughter,  and  John  Hay  and  a  lady 
whose  name  cannot  now  be  recalled.  While  they  were 
waiting  for  other  sets  to  form  Mr.  Williams  looked  down 
at  his  feet  somewhat  ruefully  and  whispered  in  mock 
alarm  that  he  had  forgotten  to  put  on  his  shoes !  The 
inaugural  ball,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  therefore,  had 
to  be  danced  in  his  morocco  slippers. 

1  Miss  M.  D.  Williams,  one  of  these  daughters,  recalls  being  frightened 
at  the  faces  of  the  mob  at  Baltimore  and  admiring  the  bravery  of  the  boy, 
"Bob"  Lincoln,  in  presenting  himself  on  the  platform  at  the  mob's  call.  At 
Washington  Mr.  Seward  met  Mrs,  Lincoln  and  party  and  took  her  and  the 
Misses  Williams  in  his  carriage  to  Williard's,  where  Mr.  Lincoln  was  already- 
established.  Mrs.  Lincoln  proved  a  good  conversationalist,  but  Mr.  Seward 
was  so  unresponsive  or  absentminded  that  the  young  girl  beside  Mrs. 
Lincoln  voted  him  a  "bore."  Later  she  realized  his  responsibilities  and  more 
than  forgave  him.  When  they  reached  Mr.  Lincoln's  rooms,  "there  he  sat." 
said  Miss  Williams,  "in  an  armchair  with  Tad  and  Willie  climbing  all  over 
him — a  beautiful  picture  in  my  memory.  That  night  Mr.  Lincoln  held  another 
reception  and,  at  Mrs.  Lincoln's  request,  the  Misses  Williams  assisted  her. 
Later,  in  his  own  apartments,  when  Mr.  Lincoln  asked  Miss  Williams  to  sing, 
and  she  questioned  him  as  to  what  kind  of  music  he  liked,  he  replied:  "Sing 
me  something  sad."  In  relating  these  incidents  Miss  Williams  said:  "His 
face  was  indeed  the  saddest  I  ever  saw,  but  when  he  smiled  it  was  one  of  the 
most  attractive." 


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HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  461 

This  friendship  of  Air.  Lincoln  had  no  doubt  much 
to  do  with  the  rumors  that  at  once  arose  in  the  press, 
especially  in  Pennsylvania,  that  Mr.  Williams  was  to 
receive  some  national  appointment.  The  Harrisburg 
correspondent  of  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette,  under  date  of 
March  I4th  (1861),  said:  "Mr.  Williams,  as  has  already 
been  stated  in  the  Gazette,  occupies  a  very  enviable  and 
distinguished  position  here.  His  speeches  have  been  the 
speeches  of  the  session,  and  have  given  him  a  national 
reputation.  *  *  It  is  a  matter  of  conversation  here 
that  the  Administration  are  about  to  confer  upon  Mr. 
Williams  an  appointment.  It  is  stated  by  some  that  he 
will  be  nominated  by  the  President  to  the  vacancy  on  the 
Supreme  Court  bench.  For  this  distinguished  position 
Mr.  Williams  is  peculiarly  qualified  by  his  profound 
knowledge  of  law,  and  brilliant  attainments.  By  others 
it  is  said  he  will  be  offered  a  foreign  appointment."  The 
selection  of  Senator  Simon  Cameron  for  a  Cabinet  posi 
tion  left  a  vacancy  in  the  United  States  Senate  that  at 
this  time  brought  forward  the  names  of  Wilmot, 
Williams,  Curtin  and  others  to  fill  it.  Pittsburgh  claimed 
the  right  to  name  this  man.  A  leading  paper1  of  that  city 
said  editorially: 

"We  want  from  Pennsylvania,  a  man  with  the  ability  and 
power  to  do  something  for  our  divided  and  distracted 
country.  *  *  *  The  moment  for  action  has  come.  The 
question  of  slavery  has  been  swallowed  up  in  the  question  of  the 
Union.  Let  Pennsylvania  send  to  the  Senate  a  man  of  mark. 
She  has  such  men,  and  although  it  is  not  for  us  to  dictate,  we 
may  as  a  Pittsburgher,  be  allowed  to  suggest  the  nomination 
and  election  of  Hon.  Thomas  Williams,  of  this  city,  now  one 
of  our  representatives  in  the  Lower  House,  as  eminently  fit  to 
be  made.  -  Mr.  Williams  is  an  educated  statesman — a 
lawyer  of  great  ability — an  orator  who  has  few  peers  in  any 
of  our  forums — a  well-advised,  large-thinking,  patriotic  citizen. 
He  might  with  great  propriety  have  been  called  to  Mr.  Lincoln's 
cabinet,  but  Mr.  Cameron  occupying  the  position  from  Penn 
sylvania,  we  know  no  man  more  fit  to  succeed  him  than  Thomas 
Williams.  He  is  a  man  whom  difficulty  and  danger  neither 
appalls  nor  deters.  His  perseverance  is  only  equalled  by  his 
calm  judgment  and  his  powers  of  argument. Coming  from 

1  Probably   the    Post — the    clipping   is    not   identified. 


462  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

us,  some  may  suppose  these  high  encomiums  ironical.  We  have 
had  our  battles  with  this  gentleman,  but  they  were  upon  local 
questions.  *  *  *  He  was  a  brave  and  skillful  opponent, 
and  fought  for  what  he  believed  to  be  right.  He  yielded  no 
inch  of  ground  while  it  was  tenable,  and  omitted  no  argument 
to  sustain  his  cause.  But  now  a  nobler  and  more  important 
field  of  action  presents  itself,  than  the  contest  between  bond 
holders  and  taxpayers.  A  Nation  is  divided  against  itself,  and 
needs  its  strongest  and  most  powerful  minds  to  arrange  its 
difficulties.  Thomas  Williams  is  the  man  for  Pennsylvania  to 
send  to  the  United  States  Senate,  in  the  present  crisis,  if  he 
will  consent  to  accept  the  position." 

A  big  petition,  signed  by  scores  of  eminent  names  in 
Pittsburgh,  was  presented  to  the  other  Allegheny  mem 
bers  of  the  Legislature  urging  them  to  support  Mr.  Wil 
liams.  Mr.  Wilmot  was  chosen,  however,  and  no  one, 
perhaps,  at  this  distance,  could  doubt  his  prior  claim  to 
it,  even  if  the  dominant  element  in  the  Legislature  had 
been  less  intensely  pitted  in  battle  against  Mr.  Williams.1 

On  the  evening  of  April  I2th  news  of  an  engagement 
at  Charleston  was  announced,  amidst  great  sensation. 
The  session  was  to  close  on  the  i8th  and  there  were  great 
questions  yet  to  be  cared  for.  It  is  not  possible  to  go 
into  details  of  such  a  legislative  body's  proceedings,  inter 
esting  as  they  are.  The  most  important  was  undoubtedly 
the  relief  of  the  banks  who,  it  was  alleged,  had  forfeited 
their  charters  because  of  suspension  of  specie  payments. 
In  all  these  questions  Mr.  Williams  took  a  conservative 
attitude.  The  session  closed  on  the  i8th  with  the  singing 
of  the  national  anthem,  "The  Star  Spangled  Banner." 

Two  days  later  an  extra  session  was  called  by  the 
Governor  for  the  3Oth  instant,  and  on  that  occasion 
he  announced  in  his  message  that  he  had  already  raised 
twenty-three  regiments,  and  Pennsylvania's  volunteers 
had  been  the  first  to  reach  Washington.  He  also  called 
for  provision  for  more  troops.  The  message  was  re 
ferred  to  a  special  committee  of  seven,  Ball  being  chair 
man  and  Williams  one  of  the  members.  Army  organiza- 

1  A  letter  of  March  15,  1861,  shows  that  Mr.  Williams  had  enough  votes  to 
have  prevented  the  election  of  Mr.  Wilmot,  or  assured  it,  and  he  chose  the  lat 
ter  and  withdrew  in  favor  of  Wilmot.  It  also  shows  that  his  friends  demanded 
that  he  should  be  recommended  for  the  Supreme  Bench  or  given  a  foreign 
mission,  and  explains  the  efforts  of  Wilmot  and  Cowan  in  his  behalf. 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  463 

tion  was  taken  up,  and,  incidentally,  of  course  the  Govern 
or's  relation  to  it  was  discussed.  This  led  to  a  telegram 
in  a  Philadelphia  paper  saying  there  was  a  breach 
between  the  Executive  and  Legislature,  which  created 
great  indignation  in  the  latter  body.  Some  wished  an 
investigation.  "I  look  upon  these  things,  entirely 
irresponsible  in  their  character,"  said  Mr.  Williams,  "as 
matters  which  are  not  worthy  of  the  consideration  of  this 
Legislature.  *  *  *  Sir,  I  have  been  something  of  a 
politician  in  my  time.  I  think  that  there  is  perhaps  no 
man  in  this  Commonwealth  who  has  been  more  largely 
abused  than  myself.  I  am,  however,  perfectly  willing, 
and  have  been  on  all  occasions,  to  allow  these  presses  a 
charter  free  as  the  mind.  I  have  felt  that  they  could  do 
me  no  harm.  Why,  Sir,  at  the  outset  of  this  session  the 
opinions  I  expressed  in  regard  to  the  importance  of 
maintaining  at  all  hazards  the  integrity  of  this  Union  and 
using  the  strong  arm  of  the  government  for  that  pur 
pose,  were  denounced  in  the  press  of  the  city  of  Philadel 
phia  as  execrable.  Now,  those  newspapers  (*  *  *) 
are  emulous  in  the  endeavor  to  show  who  shall  be  fore 
most  in  advocating  the  same  doctrines.  I  care  nothing 
about  these  things.  *  *  *  j  trust  that  we  can  live 
down  calumnies  of  malice  and  the  judgment  of  ignorance. 
Let  our  acts  here  answer  for  us,  I  desire  nothing 
further."1  The  point  which  was  the  cause  of  this  was 
largely  due  to  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Williams  to  establish  a 
system  of  accountability  in  regard  to  expenditures,  that 
system  to  include  the  Governor,  of  course,  as  well  as  all 
others  in  power.  This  was  construed  as  opposition  to  the 
Governor.  On  May  Qth  the  question  of  accountability 
came  up  again  in  some  able  debates  as  one  may  often 
hear.  In  response  to  some  member  who  touched  upon  it, 
Mr.  Williams  replied : 

"He  says  I  consult  nobody — that  I  am  my  own  adviser.  In 
that  particular  he  is  a  little  mistaken.  If  he  meant  to  say  that 
I  do  not  consult  many  of  the  politicians,  or  many  of  the  living 
of  whatever  class,  he  is  right.  I  know  nothing  about  politics 
as  a  trade.  I  have  none  of  the  arts  of  the  politician,  and  never 

1  Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.   1040. 


464  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

had.  Therefore  it  is,  perhaps,  that  I  have,  during  my  life  time, 
been  almost  invariably  in  the  minority !  Why,  sir,  I  came  into 
this  body  for  the  first  time  (except  for  a  short  period  in  1840) 
in  the  ascendancy,  with  seventy-two  men,  I  believe,  elected 
upon  the  same  basis,  upon  the  same  principles  as  myself;  and 
lo !  before  I  had  been  here  two  weeks,  I  found  myself  in  my 
old  place — in  a  minority !  It  has  seemed  to  me  as  if  that  was 
my  destiny — as  if  I  had  been  born  to  it.  However,  it  suits  me 
very  well.  *  *  *  —Well,  sir,  I  know  nothing  about  politics 
as  a  trade.  I  think  I  know  something  of  it  as  a  science.  If  I 
do  not  choose  to  consult  the  politicians  around  me,  some  of  whom 
may  be  younger  perhaps  than  myself,  there  are  other  sources 
of  information  that  may  be  consulted.  If  I  choose  not  to  consult 
with  the  living,  I  can  talk  with  the  dead.  I  can  go  to  the 
shelves  of  my  library,  and  learn  wisdom  there.  History  is 
said  to  be  philosophy  teaching  by  example.  If  I  want  to  know 
anything  about  the  effect  of  this  or  that  system  of  Government, 
I  find  my  sources  of  knowledge  there.  *  *  *  I  look  to  the 
Constitution  of  England,  from  which  we  have  derived  all  our 
best  advices  and  our  largest  experience.  I  look  to  the  history 
of  a  Government  of  which  our  own  is  almost  a  literal  copy,  and 
which  has  borne  the  blasts  of  time,  as  I  hope  our  own  will,  for  a 
thousand  years.  These  are  the  authorities  that  I  consult  when 
I  want  light.  I  do  not  speak  of  my  own  knowledge.  I  speak 
from  the  experience,  from  the  information  which  I  have  derived 
from  sources  such  as  these.  The  man  who  will  not  be  made 
wise  by  them  will  never  become  wise."1 

On  May  I5th  he  made  a  plea  for  more  conservative 
financial  methods.  One  of  his  objections  to  the  com 
mutation  bill  was  its  attack  upon  the  sinking  fund,  and 
now  when  a  new  loan  was  to  be  made  he  urged  that  pro 
vision  be  made  to  pay  it.  "It  is  not  a  question,"  said  he, 
"of  the  ability  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  to  pay; 
nobody  doubts  that;  it  is  a  question  of  the  disposition 
to  pay."  The  then  high  credit  of  the  State,  he  said,  was 
due  to  the  constitutional  amendments  of  1857,  which 
provided  a  fund  to  pay  her  enormous  debt.  "From  that 
day,"  he  continued,  "light  began  to  dawn  in  Pennsylva 
nia."  Again,  "What  have  we  done  at  the  present  session 
of  the  Legislature?  We  have  thrown  away  $400,000  of 
our  yearly  revenue  in  the  passage  of  a  misnamed, 
delusive,  monstrous  'commutation'  bill.  We  have  thrown 

1  Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.  1064. 


MRS.  THOMAS  WILLIAMS 

Halftone  of  a  painting  by  Lambdin,  about  1854,  in  possession  of  the 
Misses  Williams,  Philadelphia 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  465 

away  another  fund  of  three  million  and  a  half  of  dollars, 
the  interest  of  which  at  five  per  cent,  would  amount  to 
some  $175,000  a  year.  All  this  has  been  withdrawn,  I 
may  say,  from  our  present  revenue.  And  now,  when  we 
are  called  upon  to  provide  for  a  loan  of  three  and  a  half 
millions  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  this  great  national 
crisis,  we  are  told  that  the  loan  can  be  readily  negotiated 
because  Pennsylvania  is  able  to  pay !"  He  showed  how 
State  stocks  in  1842  had  sunk  so  low  as  34  cents  on  the 
dollar  because  the  State  did  not  make  provision  for  pay 
ment  of  her  enormous  debt,  and  the  moment  she  did  her 
credit  rose  to  par  or  nearly  so.  He  favored  a  tax  of  one 
mill  to  accompany  or  follow  the  loan.  This  incident 
shows  the  solidity  of  the  principles  upon  which  he  based 
his  actions.  It  was  not  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad's  plans 
and  desires  that  he  disliked  so  much  as  the  unsound 
finance  that  he  believed  they  represented  in  this  instance 
— with  him  it  was  the  right  at  any  cost,  not  a  system  of 
transportation  at  any  cost.  And  this  did  not  preclude 
the  possibility  of  his  opponents  believing,  in  all  sincerity, 
that  transportation  welfare  and  the  right  were  one  and 
the  same.  The  bill  was  amended  with  a  half-mill  tax  and 
passed. 

Mr.  Williams  was  a  doughty  champion  and  withal 
a  genial  gladiator  in  his  arena,  who  won  the  admiration 
and  often  the  affection  of  his  ablest  opponents.1  "Tom 
Williams,"  as  he  was  known  among  intimates,  notwith 
standing  his  innate  dignity,  was  a  general  favorite,  so 
that  when,  on  May  i6th,  the  Speaker  adjourned  the 
House  with  a  few  words,  there  were  loud  calls  for  "Wil 
liams"  from  all  parts  of  the  room,  and,  at  the  Speaker's 
suggestion,  he  took  the  stand  amid  cheers. 

"Gentlemen  of  the  House  of  Representatives/'  he  began, 
"I  feel  deeply  honored  by  this  unexpected  call.  I  wish  I  were 


1  He  was  fortunate  in  having  such  rare  advice  as  the  following:  On 
February  22d  his  daughter  Maggie,  who  was  with  him,  received  a  letter  from 
her  mother.  "You  must  try,"  said  she,  "and  not  let  your  father  carry  his 
feelings  outside  of  the  Legislative  halls — he  must  throw  everything  unpleasant 
off  as  he  quits  the  door,  &  be  friendly  with  all.  Whatever  measures  of  the 
Governor  he  opposes  let  it  be  in  a  moderate  manner  &  then  lay  it  aside  for 
social  enjoyment  and  friendly  intercourse.  He  will  accomplish  more  in  that 
way  (take  my  word  for  it)  than  any  other."  Mrs.  Williams  was  a  woman  of 
rare  tact  and  insight  into  character.  She  was  also  a  woman  of  distinction,  of 
bearing  and  manner.  The  accompanying  portrait  from  a  painting  by  Lambdin, 
about  1854,  carries  its  own  evidence  of  her  strength  of  character. 


466  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

in  a  condition  to  respond  to  it  as  it  deserves.  I  should,  however, 
be  either  more  or  less  than  man,  if,  under  the  influence  of  the 
feelings  which  have  pervaded  this  hall  and  to  which  so  loud  an 
expression  has  been  given  this  day,  I  could  sit  silent,  making 
no  response. 

"We  are  about  to  separate — perhaps  forever.  We  have,  I 
trust,  done  our  duty,  and  our  whole  duty;  that  is  for  others  to 
pass  upon.  We  have  put  the  sword  into  the  hands  of  our 
mighty  men  and  sent  them  forth  on  a  mission  of  patriotism,  to 
fight,  and,  if  need  be,  to  die  under  the  shadow  of  that  flag 
whose  glories  have  been  so  well  enunciated  and  proclaimed  this 
day  in  our  great  national  hymn. 

"We  met,  gentlemen,  four  or  five  months  ago,  in  gloom;  we 
part,  I  trust,  in  hope.  The  thunder  of  the  ordnance  in  the  harbor 
of  Charleston — the  rattling  of  the  musketry  upon  the  streets  of 
Baltimore,  when  the  blood  of  our  own  citizens  and  of  the  men 
who  derived  their  lineage  from  the  Pilgrims,  dyed  the  streets 
of  that  rebel  city — the  electric  summons  of  our  Chief — all  these 
coming  together,  have  lifted  a  mountain  from  the  heart  of  this 
people,  and  that  great  heart  of  the  free  and  mighty  north  has 
gone  out  in  one  overwhelming  burst  of  patriotism  and  wild 
enthusiasm  that  no  nation  has  ever  yet  exhibited.  [Applause.] 
Why,  sirs,  I  thanked  God — although  the  sound  of  battle  is  not 
music  to  me — I  thanked  God  when  the  reverberations  of  those 
guns  came  up  upon  our  ears.  I  felt  that  now  the  curtain  was 
up,  and  the  drama  was  about  to  open.  I  felt  once  more  that 
we  had  a  country.  [Loud  cheers.] 

"The  events  of  the  last  few  weeks  have  developed  in  the 
eyes  of  the  astonished  world  the  amazing  powers  of  a  govern 
ment  that  rests  upon  the  will  of  a  free  and  intelligent  people. 
[Cheers.]  Never  since  the  preaching  of  Peter  the  Hermit,  when 
all  Europe  was  lifted  from  its  foundation  and  precipitated 
upon  Asia,  has  the  world  witnessed  such  a  spectacle  as  we 
have  just  given  forth.  Never  was  such  a  response  to  the  call 
of  country  witnessed  in  any  nation.  It  has  made  me  feel  as 
if  I  were  once  more  a  man  and  had  once  more  a  country.  It 
was  the  star  that  beckoned  the  wise  men  of  the  East,  a  mighty 
host  of  devotees,  to  the  cradle  of  our  Lord  upon  the  plains  of 
Bethlehem.  It  is  the  starry  banner  of  our  Republic,  with  all 
the  associations  of  glory  and  renown  and  past  heroism  clustered 
around  it,  that  has  gathered  the  heart  of  this  nation  under  its 
folds.  [Loud  applause.]  That  banner  waves  and  it  will  continue 
to  wave. 

"I  said  at  the  outset  of  this  session  (and  I  feel  proud  that 
I  am  able  to  reiterate  it  now)  that  it  was  not  in  the  providence 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  467 

of  God  that  this  great  nation  should  perish — that  it  had  just 
expanded  its  wings  for  a  flight  of  centuries.  We  now  have  the 
evidence  of  it  in  the  facts  we  have  witnessed  around  us.  Why, 
look  at  our  State.  At  the  summons  of  our  Chiefs,  as  at  the 
horn  of  Poland,  every  mountain,  every  valley  in  the  Common 
wealth  has  poured  out  its  rill  in  the  way  of  contribution  to  this 
immense  flood  of  patriotism — which  absolutely  requires  Execu 
tive  interposition,  to  check  it.  Did  the  world  ever  witness  such 
a  spectacle?  Here  are  great  strong  men  weeping  like  children 
that  are  denied  the  privilege  of  perilling  their  lives  and  perhaps 
spilling  their  blood  in  the  defence  of  their  country.  [Applause.] 
I  am,  however,  glad  to  learn  from  the  communication  read 
this  morning,  that  the  Secretary  of  War,  a  citizen  of  our  State, 
suggests  to  the  Executive  of  this  Commonwealth,  'Let  the 
county  of  Allegheny  and  let  the  "wild  cat  district"  send  a  few 
more  of  their  men.'  [Cheers.]  And  we  have  them  in  numbers 
almost  numberless.  Three  hundred  thousand  men,  I  am  sure, 
could  have  been  brought  into  the  field  from  our  single  State.  I 
think  we  should  have  taken  upon  our  hands  the  job  of  disposing 
of  this  whole  question.  [Applause.]  But  it  is  in  the  way  of 
being  settled.  Massachusetts  is  already  avenged.  The  blood 
which  dyed  the  stones  of  the  streets  of  Baltimore  has  gone  up 
calling  for  vengeance;  and  now  a  retribution  is  at  hand. 
'Send  them  home  tenderly/  said  the  valiant  and  kind-hearted  Gov 
ernor  of  that  gallant  State.  'Massachusetts  desires  once  more  to 
look  upon  the  faces,  the  unmangled,  undisfigured  faces  of  her 
courageous  sons/  She  saw  them;  she  gave  them  a  soldier's 
farewell  and  a  soldier's  burial.  Then  she  rose  and  put  off  her 
robes  of  mourning  as  King  David  did  when  he  was  told  that  the 
child  of  his  affections  had  ceased  to  live.  And  now — mark  it ! — 
the  guns  of  the  men  of  Massachusetts — the  descendants  of  the 
Pilgrims — the  men  who  derived  their  lineage  from  Lexington 
and  Concord  and  Bunker's  Hill  are  frowning  destruction  over 
that  rebel  city.  [Cheers.] 

"This  is  the  first  act  in  the  drama,  which,  with  a  proper 
exertion  of  energy  on  the  part  of  the  General  Government, 
will  soon  come  to  a  conclusion,  which  will  result,  not  in  mischief 
to  this  nation,  but  in  trie  assurance  to  the  world  that  we  are 
what  we  have  ever  claimed  to  be — the  greatest  power  upon  the 
earth,  [cheers]  and  that  that  flag,  so  well  discoursed  of  to-day, 
and  the  adoration  of  which  has  become  a  species  of  religion 
amongst  us,  (if  it  has  not  always  been  so)  will  continue  to 
wave  as  it  has  heretofore  waived.  Why  should  it  not  be  so? 
There  is  a  history  in  that  flag.  There  is  an  epic  in  every  star 
of  it;  there  is  a  story  of  romance  and  heroism  and  loyalty  and 


468  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

courage  in  every  fold.  It  tells  of  the  bloody  deck  on  which 
fought  Decatur  and  Perry  and  McDonough  and  other  heroes 
equally  gallant  who  were  identified  with  our  history.,  and  on 
which  Lawrence  fell.  It  tells  too  of  the  triumphs  of  our  Revolu 
tion;  it  points  to  the  victory  of  Yorktown  as  well  as  of  New 
Orleans.  It  points  again  to  the  field  at  the  Thames,  where  the 
lion-standard  of  England,  described  by  one  of  her  poets  as 
having  'faced  a  thousand  years  the  battle  and  the  breeze/  went 
down  before  our  glorious  banner,  the  emblem  of  our  power  the 
world  over.  This  is  a  part  of  its  history.  It  will  continue  to 
wave.  Aye,  there  is  no  man  can  assign  a  limit  to  the  duration 
of  this  Republic.  It  has  a  destiny  which  it  has  only  begun  to- 
work  out.  It  is  upon  the  threshold  of  its  high  career.  This  is 
but  a  temporary  interruption;  it  will  all  pass  over  without 
injury,  and  will  only  result  in  strengthening  and  fortifying  the 
conviction  that  we  are  a  people  the  greatest  the  world  has 
seen.  Yes,  gentlemen,  Representatives,  that  banner  will  still 
continue  to  wave ;  and  a  hundred  generations  shall  yet  sit  down 
and  sing  hosannas  to  the  name  of  Washington."  [Mr.  Williams 
concluded  amid  enthusiastic,  long-continued  cheering.]1 

The  remainder  of  the  year  1861  was  crowded  with 
events  of  the  greatest  significance,  but  the  people  of 
Pennsylvania,  in  great  numbers,  while  providing  for  the 
great  national  concerns  lavishly — one  might  almost  say — 
were  still  tenacious  in  holding  more  firmly  than  ever  to 
their  opposition  to  the  railway  measures.  So  great  was 
their  resentment  over  the  recent  commutation  or  ton 
nage  tax  bill  that  when,  in  a  private  conversation,  one 
day  Senator  Clymer  of  Berks  County  told  Senator  A.  K. 
McCltire  of  the  overwhelming  landslide  in  the  new  mem 
bership  of  the  Legislature  against  the  railway  measures, 
saying,  "It  looks  as  if  we  had  you  now,"  Senator  McClure 
replied  with  significant  precision :  "Speaking  mathe 
matically,  I  think  you  have."2  And  it  was  true  enough, 
both  in  the  House  and  Senate.  Mr.  Williams  was 
returned  at  the  head  of  the  Allegheny  County  delegation 
and  his  party  elected  the  Speaker,  John  Rowre  of  Franklin 
County.3  Mr.  Williams  himself  was  placed  second  on 

1  Legislative  Record,  1861,  p.  1149. 

2  From  a  conversation  between  Colonel  McClure  and    the    author    in    the 
spring   of   1904,   with   permission  to   use.     In  a   Senate   of  33   members  the  rail 
way  people  had  but  n  against  the  opposition's  22  votes. 

3  On  January  7th  (1862)  the  Harrisburg  correspondent  of  the  North  Ameri 
can    and    United    States    Gazette    said:      "It    is    evident   from   the    debate    of   this 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  469 

the  judiciary  (general)  committee,  and  made  chairman 
of  those  on  Federal  relations  and  State  library.1  By 
January  17,  1862,  the  tonnage  tax  battle  was  on  again, 
fiercer  than  ever.2  Mr.  Hopkins  asked  for  an  investiga 
tion  of  corruption  in  the  passage  of  the  repeal  bill  of  last 
session.  Three  days  before  the  House  had  ordered  the 
judiciary  (general)  committee  to  bring  in  a  bill  to  repeal 
the  tonnage  tax  commutation  bill,  and  this  was  a  com 
panion  measure,  at  which  some  objection  was  raised, 
Representative  W.  L.  Dennis  of  Philadelphia  raising 
the  question  whether  this  was  not  an  investigation  of  a 
"dead  body."  This  brought  Williams  to  his  feet. 

"Now  if  it  be  true,"  said  he,  "as  suggested  by  the  gentleman 
from  Philadelphia  [Mr.  Dennis]  that  there  is  no  remedy  here 
for  the  acts  of  past  Legislatures,  then  our  condition  is  a  woeful 
one  indeed.  The  House  of  Representatives  of  last  session, 
the  learned  gentleman  is  pleased  to  say,  is  dead.  Yes,  it  is 
dead,  thank  God !  and  more  than  that,  I  think  it  is  in  the  con 
dition  of  the  body  of  Lazarus — it  is  tainted.  Why,  sir,  I  sug 
gested,  I  think,  in  the  last  remarks  I  had  occasion  to  make  on 
this  question  at  the  late  session — standing  almost  alone  in  this 
House,  resisting  what  I  regarded  as  a  torrent  of  corruption 
sweeping  wide  over  the  Legislature — I  said  then  that  although 
I  was  not  a  prophet  or  the  son  of  a  prophet — although  the  Penn 
sylvania  railroad  company,  with  the  revenues  of  a  principality 
and  with  a  power  which  no  corporation  in  this  Union  has  ever 
matched,  might  subsidize  the  press,  might  spike  and  muzzle  the 
organs  of  public  opinion — it  was  too  vast  a  transaction  to  be 
kept  from  the  people  of  this  State — that  it  would  find  its  way 

morning,  short  as  it  was,  that  there  is  more  aggregate  talent,  ability  and  power 
for  discussion  than  there  has  been  found  in  this  Hall  for  many  years.  I  have 
never  seen  such  a  house  assembled  here.  Should  any  occasion  arise  which 
would  call  out  its  whole  powers  it  will  compare  favorably  with  an  equal  number 
of  the  members  of  the  Federal  Congress."  He  recalls  how  Jefferson  said  any 
great  cause  would  bring  out  men  of  great  powers. 

1  Legislative  Record,  1862,  pp.  27  and  37. 

2  Ibid.,    p.    54. 

It  should  be  noted  at  this  point  that  Mr.  Williams  was  one  of  the  most 
intimate  legal  advisers  of  the  new  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Stanton,  who  called 
him  to  Washington  for  advice  "upon  certain  judicial  matters  connected  with 
the  advance  of  our  armies,"  within  eight  days  after  his  appointment.  (Telegram 
of  January  23,  1862,  among  the  Williams  papers.)  It  was,  in  this  case,  for  the 
purpose  of  asking  Mr.  Williams  to  draft  a  law  for  the  construction  of  judicial 
tribunals  for  the  territory  recaptured  and  for  maritime  prizes.  Mr.  Williams 
made  a  trip  to  Fortress  Monroe  in  consultation  with  General  Wool  on  its  rela 
tion  to  the  colored  people.  A  copy  of  a  letter  of  January  i6th  of  Simon  Cam 
eron's  to  President  Lincoln  shows  that  he,  too,  had  thought  of  Mr.  Williams  in 
this  connection  and  had  suggested  him  to  President  Lincoln  while  he  was  head 
of  the  War  Department.  A  letter  of  January  29,  1862,  shows  that  Senators 
Wilmot  and  Cowan  were  interested  in  an  effort  to  place  Mr.  Williams  on  the 
United  States  Supreme  Bench. 


4/O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

to  the  public  mind  and  would  ferment  there,  and  that  however 
innocently  gentlemen  might  vote  upon  the  arguments  then 
furnished  upon  a  measure  such  as  that,  taking  some  ten  mil 
lions  of  dollars  out  of  your  treasury  and  bestowing  it  upon  a 
private  corporation,  those  gentlemen  would  go  home,  I  thought, 
with  the  mark  of  Cain  upon  their  brows,  and  that  these  halls, 
which  then  knew  them,  would  know  them  no  more  forever. 
How  near  is  that  prophecy  to  its  fulfillment  in  what  we  see  here 
now !  If  I  had  expected  it  to  be  otherwise,  I  should  not  have 
thought  of  being  here  myself."1 

He  then  goes  on  to  show  that  these  bills  are  designed 
to  show  fraud  in  contract,  if  the  railway  interests  made 
the  contract  claim  regarding  the  commutation  and  other 
bills  of  the  series,  which  were  designed  to  create  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  system,  or  "merger,"  as  it  was 
then  called.  The  test  vote  on  postponement,  taken 
on  January  2ist,  showed  vividly  what  a  change  there  was, 
namely,  71  in  Messrs.  Williams'  and  Hopkins'  party  to 
24  in  the  railway  party,  whose  chief  spokesman  in  this 
House  was  Mr.  Dennis.  Between  Mr.  Dennis,  who  was  a 
Philadelphia  lawyer,  and  Mr.  Williams  there  were  some 
of  the  most  interesting  tilts  of  the  session.  "I  am  certain, 
Mr.  Speaker,  of  one  thing,"  said  the  former  on  this  occa 
sion,  "that  no  gentleman  on  this  floor  can  listen  with 
more  pleasure  or  unmixed  admiration  to  anything  that 
falls  from  the  lips  of  the  gentleman  from  Allegheny, 
[Mr.  Williams]  than  myself.  The  only  fault  which  I 
have  to  find  with  him  at  any  time  is,  first,  that  he  has  an 
exceedingly  winning  and  senatorial  way,  by  the  nod  of 
his  head,  of  seeming  to  carry  a  question  at  once ;  and  in 
the  second  place,  I  think  his  logic  is  at  times — very  rarely 
— a  little  faulty/'2  The  investigation  and  the  repeal  of 
the  commutation  bill  were  the  great  points  at  issue.  It 
is  not  possible  in  limited  space  to  follow  the  complicated 
fight  that  was  made.  Mr.  Williams'  own  opinion  of  the 
importance  of  the  investigation  was  that  "it  is  one  of 
gigantic  interest ;  it  dwarfs  into  nothingness  any  other 

1  Legislative  Record,  1862,  p.  54.  Farther  on  he  says  he  excepted  Phila 
delphia  representatives. 


m  s 


2  Legislative  Record,   1862,   p.  69.      In  a  reply  to  this  speech  Mr.   Willia 
stated  that  he  had  never  been  a  practitioner  in    criminal    courts — "always    de 
clined  that  sort  of  business."      P.  112. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  4/1 

that  has  ever  commanded  the  attention  of  this  Legisla 
ture.  If  we  do  no  more  than  lift  up  the  curtain  and 
expose  to  the  public  eye  the  means  by  which  this  great 
iniquity  was  consummated,  I  take  it  we  shall  render  to 
the  people  of  this  Commonwealth  the  best  service  that 
has  ever  been  rendered  by  any  Legislature.  With  the 
cloud  of  war  now  over  and  around  us,  the  people  seem 
to  have  no  wishes  beyond  the  salvation  of  the  country, 
the  protection  of  the  great  general  interests  of  the  repub 
lic,  outside  of  the  particular  subject  of  inquiry  which  now 
engages  the  attention  of  this  House."  He  described  the 
railway  "monopoly"  as  a  "colossus  that  bestrides  this 
Commonwealth  with  one  foot  on  the  Ohio  and  the  other 
on  the  Atlantic  seaboard/'  He  told  in  a  speech  teeming 
with  beauty  and  forcefulness  of  illustration  of  how 
Charles  V  tried  to  make  a  number  of  watches  run 
together  and  failed,  even  as  he  had  failed  to  make  men 
think  alike  in  religion ;  but,  at  the  last  session,  "the 
Pennsylvania  railroad  company  was  able  to  achieve  a 
miracle  greater  than  that !  It  could  make  sixty  men 
think  alike  upon  every  line,  every  syllable  and  every  letter 
of  that  bill,  and  no  man  here,  even  with  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon  and  the  eloquence  of  Cicero,  could  have  effected 
an  alteration  even  in  the  crossing  of  a  t  or  the  dotting  of 
an  i.  This  looked  miraculous.  It  was  a  miracle — very 
short  of  a  miracle."1 

The  investigation  went  on  with  all  but  unanimous 
consent  of  the  House.2  It  showed  great  corruption.  The 
main  effort,  however,  was  to  get  President  Scott  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  on  the  stand,  but  Senator  McClure 
told  Mr.  Hopkins  privately  that  the  investigation  should 
not  touch  two  or  three  men,  one  of  whom  was  Scott,  who 
was  in  charge  of  the  government's  transportation,  and 
the  way  that  McClure  kept  his  word  is  an  interesting  tale. 
Mr.  Williams  had  secured  the  order  of  the  House  to  go 
and  get  Mr.  Scott.  The  officer  sent  was  "seen"  by  the 
Republican  leader  in  the  Senate,  and  with  the  result  that 

1  On  p.  525  he  plainly  says  that  were  it  not  for  the  tonnage  tax  restoration 
he  would  not  have  been  in  the  House,  and  "when  it  is  disposed  of  I  shall  con 
sider  my  work  done." 

-  Legislative  Record,  1862,  p.  135.  Mr.  Dennis  was  the  only  one  voting  in 
the  negative  to  92  for  the  Hopkins  resolution. 


472  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

he  would  always,  after  an  interview  in  which  Mr.  Scott 
was  kept  fully  informed  of  the  situation,  return 
announcing  his  inability  to  "find"  Mr.  Scott.  After  a  few 
experiences  of  this  kind  Mr.  Williams'  suspicions  were 
aroused,  and  he  determined  to  have  a  new  officer  and  go 
with  him  himself.  Senator  McClure,  hearing  of  this, 
sent  a  sealed  letter  by  messenger  to  the  Willard  Hotel, 
Washington,  and  then  telegraphed  Senator  David 
Wilmot  to  go  there  and  get  the  letter.  It  informed  the 
latter  gentleman  that  Mr.  Scott  must  be  got  out  of  the 
way,  as  Williams  was  after  him  in  person ;  that  he  must 
lay  the  matter  before  President  Lincoln  and  effect  it  in 
some  way,  as  Scott's  services  were  too  vital  to  the  Union 
cause  now  to  be  interrupted.  Senator  Wilmot  called  at 
the  White  House;  Mr.  Lincoln  called  in  Secretary  Stan- 
ton  and  showed  him  the  letter,  asking  him  what  should 
be  done.  The  Secretary  promptly  stated  to  the  President 
that  he  had  just  ordered  Mr.  Scott  to  Kentucky  to  give 
much  needed  aid  in  the  transportation  service  there  and 
that  he  would  be  gone  several  months.  "And,"  said 
Colonel  McClure  in  recounting  the  incident,  "Stanton 
forthwith  ordered  Scott  to  start,  and  that  night,  while 
Williams  was  asleep,  Scott's  train  was  standing  on  a  sid 
ing  at  Harrisburg  and  I  was  having  an  interview  with 
him.  The  next  morning,  when  Mr.  Williams  started  for 
Washington,  Scott's  train  was  passing  out  of  the  western 
edge  of  the  State  for  Kentucky  I"1 

On  March  I4th  the  bill  restoring  the  tonnage  tax  was 
passed  in  the  House  by  a  vote  of  70  to  2$.2  In  the 
Senate  the  territory  which  had  sent  Senators  to  restore 
the  tonnage  tax  had  a  comfortable  majority,  "mathe 
matically  speaking,"  as  Senator  McClure  had  told  Mr. 
Clymer.  "Many  of  these  Senators,  however,"  said 

1  From  an  interview  by  the  author  with  Colonel  A.  K.  McClure  in  Philadel 
phia  in  1904,  with  permission  to  use. 

•  Legislative  Record,  1862,  p.  558.  These  are  such  fine  debates  along  here 
that  it  is  unfortunate  that  space  will  not  permit  reproduction.  A  letter  of  Mr. 
Williams  of  February  15,  1862,  says:  "I  have  just  achieved  a  great  triumph  in 
effecting  the  Repeal  of  the  Tonnage  Tax  infamy  of  last  Session— so  far  as  the 
House  is  concerned — by  a  vote  of  72  to  28.  Of  this  lean  minority  no  less  than 
17  are  Philadelphia  members,  leaving  only  n  outside  of  that  city  &  two  of 
these  salaried  attorneys  of  the  Company."  This  was  undoubtedly  a  slip  in  the 
name  of  the  month,  which  should  be  March.  His  totals  also  conflict  with  those 
of  the  Legislative  Record,  but  he  may  have  included  absentees  whose  sentiments 
were  known  to  him.  The  letter  s'hows  him  to  have  been  on  a  joint  Penn 
sylvania-New  Jersey  commission  on  defenses  of  the  Delaware. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  473 

Colonel  McClure  in  describing  the  event,  "did  not  person 
ally  believe  that  the  tax  should  be  restored."  He  knew 
who  these  gentlemen  were  and  forthwith  called  them  to  a 
secret  caucus  one  night,  and  told  them  that  he  knew  they 
did  not  believe  that  the  tax  should  be  again  put  on  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad,  but  that,  if  they  would  stand  by 
him,  he  would  construct  a  substitute  bill  for  which  they 
could  vote  and  satisfy  their  constituents  but  which  would 
sustain  a  defeat  at  the  hands  of  the  House  itself.  They 
agreed.  His  bill  proposed  to  restore  it  to  the  Pennsyl 
vania,  but  also  to  put  a  tax  on  other  roads,  a  measure  that 
would  raise  an  opposition  in  the  House  fatal  to  the  bill 
from  the  constituency  of  those  roads.  It  worked,  and 
thereupon  the  great  fight  of  the  session  was  over.  The 
railway  measures  were  shrewdly  won  even  against 
"mathematical"  majorities  in  both  Houses  I1  The  ton 
nage  tax,  which  was  the  railway's  indemnity  to  the  State 
for  the  depreciation  of  her  canal  system,  or  "public 
works,"  and,  in  a  sense,  the  compensation  for  keeping  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  road  out  of  the  State,  was  sur 
rendered  by  the  State  to  the  new  railway  system.2 

It  is  unfortunate  that  his  various  legal  arguments  in 
the  entire  debate  cannot  be  given.  They  show  high 
lawyer-like  treatment  of  the  subject  and  evince  a  tem 
per  thoroughly  conciliatory  and  without  malice.  "I  can 
assure  all  who  hear  me  that  I  have  no  quarrel  with 
Philadelphia.  I  greatly  admire  her,"  said  he,  and  added, 
"but,  sir,  there  is  no  question  of  that  kind  here."  His 
eye  was  not  on  places  or  persons,  but  on  the  just  opera 
tion  of  great  general  laws — his  was,  as  he  believed,  the 
statesman's  purview.  He  beheld  the  looming  shadow 
of  the  modern  giant — corporate  power — and  was  trying 
to  find  and  keep  it  in  its  legitimate  sphere,  as  many 
another  statesman  has  been  doing  ever  since  and  shall 

1  Interview  by  the  author  with  Colonel  A.  K.  McClure  in  1904,  with  permis 
sion  to  use.      See  the  Senate  substitute  bill  in  Legislative  Record,  1862,    p.    987. 
When  the  bill  was  returned  to  the  House  Mr.    Williams   said:     "Now,    I   am 
responsible  to  some  extent  for  the  paternity    of    the    original    measure    which 
passed   this   house    by  a   large   majority,    but   I    disclaim   any   responsibility   for 
the  beggar's  brat,  the  miserable  foundling,  that  has  been  thrust  into  the  cradle 
of  the   rightful   heir.     Sir,   the  purpose  was   not  to   amend,   but  to  destroy   by 
indirection."     And,  of  course,  he  stated  the  fact.      The  House  refused  to  pass 
the  bill,  by  a  vote  of  67  to  24,  on  the  single  speech  of  Mr.  Williams. 

2  In  a  speech  on  p.  552,  Legislative  Record,    1862,    Mr.    Williams    gives    an 
excellent  resume  of  the  history  of  the  whole  question. 


4/4  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

continue  to  do  until  the  political  and  legal  province  of 
corporate  power  is  as  fully  defined  as  are  individual  or 
municipal  and  State  powers.  His  viewpoint  was  pecul 
iarly  judicial;  this  was  recognized  by  his  fellow-members 
in  his  assignment  to  the  judiciary  (general)  committee.  If 
he  used  powerful  rhetorical  weapons,  they  were  wielded 
upon  the  basis  of  legal  argument,  and  it  was  because  this 
was  intuitively  and  almost  universally  recognized 
among  those  who  disagreed  with  him  that  he  won  their 
admiration,  if  not  affection,  even  while  dealing  his 
doughtiest  blows.  There  were  many  genial  descriptive 
names  given  him,  "Old  Man  Eloquent,"  "the  Walking 
Library,"  and  the  like.1  One  of  his  colleagues  referred 
to  him  as  ''the  engineer  in  the  cause  of  honesty,"  and 
even  the  brilliant  Dennis  confessed  that  "My  friend  from 
Allegheny  and  myself,  whatever  may  have  been  our 
seeming  contentions  and  disputes,  have  cherished  towards 
each  other  all  this  session  a  love  that  was  not  excelled  by 
the  love  of  David  and  Jonathan."2  So  when  the  session 
closed  on  April  n,  1862,  the  House,  this  time  by  motion, 
requested  him  to  make  its  farewell  address. 

He  spoke  of  the  inactivity  of  the  army  in  the  past 
year  and  the  wisdom  of  the  choice  of  Stanton  as  the 
head  of  the  War  Department  in  eloquent  periods. 

"It  was  my  fortune  to  know,  and  know  well,  the  man  whom 
he  [the  President]  had  thus  selected.  He  was  a  lawyer  and 
no  politician,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term.  He  had  not 
sought  or  intrigued  for  the  position.  A  lawyer  myself  and  no 
politician  either,  I  had  practiced  in  the  same  courts  with  him 
for  many  years.  I  knew  that  he  was  able,  active,  patriotic, 
correct  and  bold — that  he  was  endowed  with  high  intellectual 
powers,  and  a  herculean  energy,  which  was  a  guaranty  that 
things  must  move.  I  thought  I  understood  his  opinions,  and 
that  he  was  the  man  above  all  others  whom  Providence  had 
indicated  for  the  place  at  the  crisis.  I  hurried  to  Washington 
for  the  purpose  of  seeing  him.  I  portrayed  in  language  as  strong 
as  I  could  utter  the  calamitous  condition  of  the  country.  I 
insisted  that  we  were  losing  caste  among  the  nations — that  the 
very  unmolested  presence  of  a  rebel  army  beyond  the  Potomac 
and  in  view  of  our  very  capital,  was  a  standing  menace  which 

1  Legislative  Record,  1862,  p.  933. 
-  Ibid.,  950. 


HARRISBURG   AND    WASHINGTON  475 

was  worse  than  a  dozen  defeats — that  no  government  could 
safely  stop  to  inquire  whether  it  was  strong  enough  to  put 
down  a  rebellion — that  it  were  better  for  us  to  lose  a  battle  or 
even  an  army,  than  to  endure  this  reproach  and  humiliation; 
that  we  could  not  afford  to  stand  this  throughout  the  winter, 
and  that  our  armies  must  move,  and  the  Republic  at  once  fight 
its  way  back  to  the  high  position  which  it  had  lost,  without 
regard  either  to  rough  weather  or  hesitating  generals.  His 
answer  was :  I  realize  fully  the  force  of  all  you  say.  I  agree 
with  you  that  the  army  must  move.  If  my  counsel  can  avail, 
it  must  and  shall  move — and  it  did  move — and  now  behold ! 
The  telegraphic  wires  flash  upon  us  from  day  to  day  almost 
with  the  rapidity  of  minute  guns,  the  announcement  of  victories 
on  victories,  multipled  and  multiplying,  that  our  memory  fails 
to  rehearse  the  catalogue." 

"The  time  is  not  distant,"  says  another  gem  of  that 
eloquent  farewell, — "I  see  it  with  the  eye  of  faith — when 
our  glorious  eagle,  the  proud  emblem  of  our  nationality, 
which  stoops  over  your  head,  shall  be  seen  perching  over 
the  blackened  battlements  of  every  fortress  that  treason 
has  rent  from  our  hands,  and  when  the  stars  and  stripes 
shall  float  again  from  ocean  to  ocean  over  every  State  of 
this  now  apparently  dismembered  Union."1 

A  company  of  young  people  were  spending  an  evening 
at  his  home  about  a  year  later,  and  some  one  present, 
having  a  copy  of  the  Confederate  song,  "The  Bonny  Blue 
Flag  That  Bears  a  Single  Star,"  one  of  his  daughters  led 
in  trying  it.  Mr.  Williams,  in  his  study  heard  it,  and, 
roused  by  its  sentiments,  dashed  off  the  following,  sug 
gesting  to  the  young  people  that  these  were  fitter  senti 
ments  for  them  to  sing.  The  song  soon  found  its  way 
into  the  press  and  the  army  and  finally  in  a  "Moore's 
National  Songs :" 

"HURRAH  FOR  THE  UNION  FLAG  !" 

''Brothers  of  free  descent  are  we,  and  native  to  the  soil, 
Knit  soul  to  soul,  in  one  great  whole,  fruit  of  our  Fathers'  toil ; 
But  when  that  bond  of  love  was  rent,  the  cry  rose  near  and  far, 
To  arms !     To  arms  !     Long  live  the  stripes  !     We  know  no 
'single  star.' 

1  Legislative  Record,   1862,  pp.  1030-1. 


476  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 


CHORUS. 

"Hurrah !  Hurrah  for  the  Union  Flag,  Hurrah ! 
Hurrah  for  the  Union  Flag,  that  knows  no  'single  star.' 

"So  long  as  Southern  arrogance  forbore  to  touch  that  flag, 
Full  many  a  taunt  we  meekly  bore,  and  many  an  idle  brag; 
But  when  on  Sumter's  battlements,  the  traitors  did  it  mar, 
We  flung  abroad  the  Union  Flag,  that  ne'er  shall  lose  a  star. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"And  first  the  gallant  Keystone  State,  from  every  mountain  glen, 
From  hill  and  valley,  lake  and  town,  sent  down  her  stalwart 

men; 

And  all  New  England  rose  amain,  as  blew  the  trump  of  war, 
And  raised  on  high  their  Fathers'  Flag  that  knows  no  'single 

star.' 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"From  Saratoga's  ten-crowned  heights,  from  Monmouth's  bloody 

plain, 
The  men  of  York  and  Jersey  too,  both  swelled  the  mustering 

train; 

As  onward — onward — fierce  it  rush'd  o'er  all  opposing  bars, 
To  punish  those  who  dared  insult  our  glorious  stripes  and  stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"Missouri,  too,  her  garments  red,  and  little  Delaware, 
With  heart  as  big  as  when  of  old  she  bore  a  lion's  share, 
Have  burst  the  chain,  which  cramps  the  soul,  and  all  that's  noble 

mars, 
And  wheeled  in  line,  come  weal  or  woe,  beneath  the  stripes  and 

stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"And  'Maryland,  our  Maryland,'  though  called  with  'fife   and 

drum,' 

And  'old-line  bugle'  too,  to  fight  'gainst  the  'Northern  scum,' 
Has  thought  of  Camden's  bloody  field,  and  Eutaw's  iron  scars, 
And  lo !  she  stands,  where  erst  she  stood,  beneath  the  stripes 

and  stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 


HARRISBURG    AND    WASHINGTON  477 

"Would  we  could  say  the  same  of  thee,  thou  dark  and  bloody 

ground ! 

Whose  sexless  sages,  false  of  heart,  a  way  of  peace  have  found ! 
Shame  on  you !     No  half  faith  would  we !    Up,  gird  ye  for  the 

wars, 
And  take  your  place  as  men  once  more,  beneath  the  stripes  and 

stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"From  thy  Medusa  glance  we  turn,  with  hearts  of  cheer  and 

pride, 

To  West  Virginia,  virgin  rib,  torn  from  false  mother's  side. 
Daughter  of  strife  !     Fair  Freedom's  child !     Thy  mountains 

ring  afar, 
With  echoing  shouts,  for  that  blest  Flag,  that  counts  another 

star. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 


"And  next  the  hardy  pioneers,  the  dauntless  and  the  brave, 
From  those  domains  by  Freedom  won,  that  never  knew  a  slave, 
Their  trusty  rifles  all  in  hand,  with  eye  and  port  like  Mars, 
Grasped  once  again  with  iron  hand,  the  staff  that  bears  our 

stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 


"And  from  the  bison's  prairie  haunts,  o'er  Mississippi's  flood, 
From  Minnehaha's  sparkling  Falls,  from  Kansas'  land  of  blood, 
New  England's  youngest  scions  there,  have  heard  the  din  of 

wars, 
And  grasped  their  Fathers'   ancient  brand,   and   rear'd  their 

stripes  and  stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"And  farther  still,  where  sunset  seas,  bathe  California's  shore, 
And  grim  Sierras  darkly  frown  its  golden  treasures  o'er, 
Our  Western  Twins  have  heard  the  call,  and  answered  from 

afar, 
\Ve  come !  We  come !  Rear  high  the  Flag,  that  knows  no  single 

star. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 


478  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"And  more  'twill  count,  no  Pleiad  lost,  of  all  that  shining  host, 
Though  dim  eclipse  have  veiled  their  fires,  and  traitors  loudly 

boast ; 
But  one  by  one  those  wand'ring  lights  shall  gem  our  heavens, 

like  Mars, 
And  all  the  nations  bless  our  stripes  and  coronet  of  stars. 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"No  other  flag  shall  ever  float  above  our  homes  or  graves, 
Save  yonder  blazing  oriflamme,  that  flutters  o'er  our  braves ; 
It's  rainbow  stripes,  our  Northern  lights — with  no  sinister  bars ; 
Our  ancient  flag !  Our  Fathers'  flag !  Our  glorious  stripes  and 
stars ! 

"Hurrah !    Hurrah,"  etc. 

"Then  bear  that  banner  proudly  up,  young  warriors  of  our  land, 
With  hearts  of  love,  and  arms  of  faith,  and  more  than  iron 

hand! 

Down  with  the  Northern  renegade !  and  join  our  gallant  tars, 
In  rearing  high,  in  victory,  our  deathless  stripes  and  stars ! 

"Hurrah  !    Hurrah  for  the  Union  Flag,  Hurrah  ! 
Hurrah  for  the  Union  Flag,  that  knows  no  'single  star.'  " 


O     o 
3     * 


o 
•f.    '•*> 

C     <u 


rH         CC 

O     ^ 


CHAPTER    XVI 
His     ELECTION     TO     THE     THIRTY-EIGHTH     CONGRESS 

'THE     SUMNER     OF     THE     LOWER     HOUSE" 

His    NOTABLE    EULOGY   ON   PRESIDENT    LINCOLN 
1862 

In  the  autumn  elections  of  that  year,  1862,  in  keeping 
with  the  new,  aggressive  spirit  represented  by  the  appoint 
ment  of  Stanton  as  head  of  the  War  Department,  the 
constituents  of  Mr.  Williams  determined  that  his  good 
work  in  the  Legislature  should  be  recognized  and  that 
another  aggressive  force  should  be  contributed  to  the 
Lower  House  of  Congress  at  least,  since  the  Legislature 
had  not  sent  him  to  the  Senate.1  The  Thirty-eighth 
Congress  met  for  organization  a  year  later,  namely,  on  the 
7th  of  December,  1863. 2  There  upon  the  floor  he  found 
his  old-time  anti-Mason  antagonist,  the  venerable  though 
none  the  less  fiery  Thaddeus  Stevens,  then  seventy  years 

1  His  was  the  Butler-Armstrong  district.  Moorehead  was  retained  for  Pitts 
burgh.      A   confidential   letter   from    Stanton   at   this   time   throws    light   on    the 
feeling  in  some  quarters  on  the  Curtin  controversy.     It  was  dated   October  31, 

1862,  and    reads    as    follows:      "Governor    Curtin    is    acting    very    strangely    in 

regard   to   the   draft   &  the   Government   generally. 1    wish   you   would   go   to 

Harrisburgh   and  look  into   things   &   come  on   here.     It   is   said   he   expects   to 
be   elected  to  the    Senate  by  the   Anti-War   Republicans   &   Democrats.     They 
would  pay  that  price  to  prevent  the   Government  from  getting  troops  in  Penn 
sylvania.     It  behooves  loyal  men  to  be  vigilant  and  active.     Yours  Truly,  Edwin 
M.    Slanton."      Williams    papers.      A    letter   from    Simon    Cameron   of   July   28, 

1863,  from    Harrisburg    is    very    positive    and    emphatic    in    the    same   vein.      A 
Stanton    letter    of    March    13,    1863,    shows    the    darkness    and    gloom    of    that 
period    also. 

2  A  letter  of  Williams',  dated  that  day,  says:    "On  my  arrival  I  was  called 
on  at  once  to  attend   a  caucus   at   the   Capitol.     We   sat  till   nearly    12  o'clock 
discussing   the   possibilities    of   a    disturbance   in   the   organization    through   the 
treachery  of  Emerson  Etheridge,  the  Tennessee  clerk  of  the  last  House.     From 
the  facts  stated  by  a  dozen  members  it  seemed  obvious  that  the  scoundrel  was 
seriously   meditating  to   throw   the   organization   into  the   hands  of  the  Copper 
heads,  by  refusing  to  put  the  names  of  the  members  from  the  strong  Republican 
States   in  the   Roll,   for  an   alleged   want   of  verbal   accuracy   in  the  returns.     It 
was  equally  obvious,  however,   that  any  attempt  at   Revolution   like  this  would 
probably  cost  him  his  life,  before  he  left  the  hall,  &  he  has  been  since  waited 
on  by  some  of  the  Western  members  &  personally  warned  that  such  an  attempt 
on  his  part  would  be  fatal  to  himself." 

479 


480  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

old.  Williams,  who  was  fifty-six  years  old,  came  in  with 
wrhat  might  be  called  the  next  generation,  with  such  men 
as  Lovejoy,  then  fifty-one  years  old;  Morrill,  fifty- two; 
Boutwell,  forty-four;  Dawes,  forty-six;  E.  B.  Washburne, 
also  forty-six;  and  the  now  venerable  Judge  M.  Russell 
Thayer  of  Philadelphia,  then  forty-three.  Among  the 
younger  men  were  Elaine,  at  thirty-two ;  Randall  at 
thirty-four ;  Garfield  at  thirty-one ;  "Sunset"  Cox  at 
twenty-eight ;  the  now  venerable  Allison  at  thirty-three ; 
and  Windom  at  thirty-five,  while  the  Speaker,  Colfax, 
ranged  on  the  borderland  between  at  thirty-nine.  The 
aggressive  war  party  were  in  the  ascendant  and  the  great 
key-victories  in  July  at  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg 
brought  forth  the  first  real  visions  of  final  success.  The 
awfulness  of  the  tragedy  appalled  the  timid,  but  the  gov 
ernment  and  the  dominant  party  proposed  more  troops 
and  even  greater  vigor  to  bring  the  mighty  contest  more 
quickly  and  certainly  to  a  close.  Consequently  the  whole 
question  of  preparation  for  reconstruction — which  had 
even  been  foreshadowed  in  Cameron's  and  Stanton's 
desire  to  have  Mr.  Williams  not  only  draft  a  law  for 
courts  over  conquered  territory  but  to  have  him  a  presid 
ing  judge  in  those  courts — was  precipitated  upon  Con 
gress.  Mr.  Williams  found  the  aged  radical,  Stevens,  the 
acknowledged  leader  in  the  House — the  man  whom  since 
his  first  entry  into  politics  some  thirty  years  before  he 
had  either  refused  to  join  or,  if  he  did,  only  with  discrim 
inating  qualification.  "Williams  a  radical !"  exclaimed 
his  now  venerable  and  beloved  colleague,  Judge  M.  Rus 
sell  Thayer,  in  a  recent  conversation,  in  which  the  author 
raised  the  question.  "In  the  same  class  with  such  men 
as  Stevens !  No,  indeed,  he  was  no  radical,  if  that  is  the 
conception  of  the  term.  Williams  was  pre-eminently 
judicial."1  This  estimate  is  confirmed  by  his  assignment 
to  the  committee  on  judiciary,  along  with  James  F.  Wil 
son  of  Iowa  (chairman),  George  S.  Boutwell  of  Massa 
chusetts,  Francis  Kernan  of  New  York,  Francis  Thomas 
of  Maryland  (Williams'  name  is  next  in  order),  Austin 

1  From  a  conversation  with  Judge  Thayer,  had  by  the  author  at  his  home 
in  Philadelphia,  in  the  spring  of  1904,  with  permission  to  use  such  as  would 
answer  the  purposes  of  this  work.  Only  the  Judge's  advanced  years  prevented 
him  from  reducing  the  substance  of  his  conversation  to  writing. 


THK  THIRTY-EIGHTH  CONGRKSS 

Halftone  oi  a  contemporary  photograph  by  Brady  in  possession  of  the  Misses  Williams, 

Philadelphia 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     481 

A.  King  of  Missouri,  Frederick  E.  Woodbridge  of  Ver 
mont,  Daniel  Morris  of  New  York  and  George  Bliss  of 
Ohio.1  And  yet  Mr.  Williams  believed  there  was  a  time 
and  place  for  radical  action,  and  after  about  two  months 
of  careful  study  of  the  situation  he  began  his  congres 
sional  career  by  supporting  some  measures,  at  least,  that 
at  that  time  were  classed  as  "radical."  His  grounds  for 
it,  however,  were,  as  shall  be  seen,  thoroughly  judicial  in 
scope  and  spirit. 

On  February  3d  (1864),  when  Congress  was  in  com 
mittee  of  the  whole  on  the  state  of  the  Union,  and  was 
discussing  the  enrollment  act,  he  expressed  himself  on 
conditions  at  that  time.2 

"Mr.  Chairman,"  said  he,  "if  this  had  been  a  new  question, 
I  should  have  felt  greatly  embarrassed  as  to  the  policy  or  pro 
priety  of  commuting  military  service  for  money.  This  is  a  war 
measure,  and  not  a  revenue  measure.  The  Government  wants 
men  and  not  money.  The  latter  has  been  furnished  by  the  people 
with  unstinted  and  ungrudging  liberality ;  nay,  with  a  prodigality 
which  has  surprised  ourselves,  and  at  which  the  world  stands 
amazed.  I  do  not  know  how  to  value  the  stout  heart  or  the 
strong  arm  of  the  American  freeman  in  the  current  money  of 
the  merchant.  I  do  not  like  the  traffic  in  men  and  muscle  and 
sinew,  whether  it  be  white  or  black.  Looking  to  the  experience 
of  other  republics,  I  should  greatly  deprecate  the  conversion  of 
the  soldier  of  ours  info  a  mercenary.  Between  men  of  American 
growth  and  training,  and  the  richest  of  the  metals,  I  know  no 
common  standard  of  comparison.  With  me  they  are  quantities 
incommensurable.  When  the  Republic  demands  the  services 
of  her  children,  I  know  no  answer  they  can  make,  except  that 
of  Isaac,  that  they^  are  ready  for  the  sacrifice.  It  is  the  answer 
which  their  uncalculating  instincts  prompted  when  the  echoes 
of  the  guns  in  Charleston  harbor  thrilled  along  their  nerves,  and 
half  a  million  of  them  sprang  to  their  arms  at  the  first  summons 
of  the  President  to  avenge  the  insult  to  our  flag;  when  the  very 
yearnings  of  maternity  were  hushed,  and  the  American,  like  the 
Spartan  mother,  arrayed  her  youngest  born  as  though  it  had  been 
for  the  bridal,  put  the  musket  in  his  hands,  and  sent  him  out 
with  the  invocation  of  God's  blessing  upon  his  errand,  and  the 
injunction  to  do  his  duty  and  come  back  upon  his  shield,  if  such 

1  On  the  22d  of  January,   1864,  Mr.  Williams  was  also  placed  on  the  com 
mittee    on    uniform    system    of   coinage,    weights    and    measures.       Congressional 
Globe,  Thirty-eighth   Congress,    ist   Session,   Part   i,   p.   310. 

2  Congressional  Globe,  Thirty-eighth  Congress,   ist  Session,   Part  i,  p.  475. 


482  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

were  the  fortunes  of  war,  but  not  without  it.  It  is  the 
answer  which  they  would  still  make,  if  their  ardor  were  not 
chilled  by  the  fatal  and  inglorious  inaction,  the  wearisome 
delays,  the  inadequate  results,  and  the  want  of  earnestness, 
which  have  distinguished  so  many  of  our  commanders ;  or,  what 
is  worse  still,  if  their  love  of  country  was  not  overlaid  and 
smothered  by  the  devilish  suggestion  of  wicked  counsellors, 
who  have  squatted  at  their  ears,  and  distilled  into  them  the 
subtle  venom  of  party. 

"They  have  ceased,  however,  to  make  that  answer.  Enthusi 
asm  was  too  weak  to  survive  rebuffs  and  disappointments,  while 
treason  at  home  was  but  too  ready  to  make  them  the  occasion 
lor  denunciations  against  the  Government  and  questions  as  to 
the  rightfulness  and  the  successful  results  of  the  war.  It  has 
become,  of  course,  a  necessity  to  remind  the  backward  of  their 
duty,  and  to  insist  that  it  shall  be  performed.  These  arguments 
have  prevailed,  however,  with  many  of  the  people  who  had 
been  accustomed  to  take  counsel  from  the  malcontents.  They 
have  held  back,  accordingly,  until  it  has  become  indispensable 
to  awaken  them  to  a  sense  of  the  obligations  which  they  owe  to 
their  country.  Their  advisers  do  not,  however,  deny  the  duty; 
so  far  as  lip-service  is  concerned,  there  is  an  abundance  of  it. 
But  they  insist  that  the  performance  shall  be  a  voluntary  one, 
or,  in  other  words,  that  it  shall  rest  in  their  own  discretion. 
Like  Falstaff,  they  would  do  nothing  on  compulsion.  To  com 
pel  a  Democrat  to  fight  would  be  anti-republican,  or  if  there  is 
to  be  compulsion,  it  must  be,  upon  the  authority  of  a  great 
casuist  of  the  Romish  Church,  who  has  not  read  Bellarmine  in 
vain,  and  knows  how  to  turn  a  corner  as  adroitly  as  the  original 
and  inimitable  Jack  himself,  a  voluntary  one,  a  sort  of  compul 
sion  in  the  Pickwickian  sense.  To  compel  him  in  any  other 
way  would  be  a  violation  of  his  prerogative  as  a  freeman.  A 
perfect  liberty  is  the  right  of  doing  what  we  please,  but  never 
anything  on  compulsion. 

"And  now  a  word  or  two  in  sober  earnest  on  the  objection 
taken  seriously  here,  and  urged  throughout  the  country,  in  rela 
tion  to  the  legitimacy  of  the  draft.  I  need  not  apologize  for 
speaking  on  that  point.  It  is  always  important  to  satisfy  the 
people  not  only  that  a  thing  is  law,  but  that  it  is  right.  It  is 
always  well  to  add  the  sanctions  of  conscience  and  the  sense  of 
duty  to  the  mandates  of  the  lawgiver.  Without  this,  laws  are 
practically  impotent.  The  'sic  I'olo,  sic  jubco,  stat  pro  rationc 
voluntas'  of  an  imperial  rescript  is  not  the  argument  for  an 
American  citizen.  He  wants  more  than  this,  and  he  wants  it 
here  because  immense  pains  have  been  taken  to  cloud  his 
perceptions  and  pervert  his  moral  sense  by  representing  the 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     483 

compulsory  performance  of  the  highest  of  his  duties  as  a  viola 
tion  of  his  liberties.  The  oracles  of  the  Opposition  have  pro 
claimed — their  highest  legal  authorities  in  Pennsylvania,  in  the 
exercise  of  a  jurisdiction  heretofore  unknown,  have  decided — 
that  the  act  of  the  last  session  was  unconstitutional.  Men  equally 
trusted  by  them  here  have  insisted  that  its  principle  was  anti- 
republican.  It  is  important,  therefore,  to  inquire  whether  these 
things  are  so — whether  there  is  anything  here  to  authorize  these 
imputations  or  to  excuse  even  a  reluctant  submission  to  a 
measure  which  is  essential  to  the  safety  of  the  nation  and  has 
been  made  necessary  by  the  counsels  of  the  very  men  who  now 
complain  of  it. 

"I  do  not  propose  to  enter  into  objections  of  detail  arising 
out  of  the  peculiar  features  of  the  law  or  to  argue  the  question 
upon  merely  technical  or  professional  grounds.  These  are  for 
the  courts.  This  is  a  higher  forum,  and  the  objection  made  to 
the  principle — radical  as  it  is — an  appeal  from  the  lawyer  to 
the  publicist,  from  the  courts  to  the  people.  It  is  the  statesman 
who  must  decide  it,  and  not  the  judge. 

"Is  it  true,  then,  that  a  compulsory  levy  of  troops — a  con 
scription,  if  you  please — in  the  extremity  of  a  State  is  anti- 
republican  in  principle,  or  in  other  words,  at  war  with  the 
spirit  of  our  institutions  and  the  genius  and  character  of  this 
Government?  It  has  been  so  announced  on  this  floor,  on 
authority  supposed  to  be  conclusive,  and  has  gone  to  the 
country  without  contradiction.  It  was  a  challenge  of  the  law 
from  a  higher  point  than  the  Constitution.  It  was  not  the 
assertion  in  terms  that  the  law  was  r.t  variance  with  the  Con 
stitution,  but  in  effect  that  the  Constitution  itself  was  not 
republican,  and  did  not  conform  to  the  fundamental  idea  on 
which  it  rested.  It  was  the  proclamation  of  a  higher  law  which 
the  authority  "to  raise  and  support  armies"  had  impinged  upon. 

"Well,  I  am  no  higher-law  man,  except  so  far  as  the  consid 
eration  of  the  public  safety  or  the  nation's  life  may  make  me  so, 
I  am  not  ashamed  or  afraid  to  recognize  thus  publicly  the  maxim 
of  the  salus  populi  suprema  lex.  It  was  a  provision  of  consum 
mate  wisdom  in  the  constitution  of  republican  Rome,  and  one 
which  in  the  judgment  of  one  of  the  acutest  and  profoundest 
statesmen  of  any  age  was  the  source  of  all  its  grandeur  as  well 
as  the  guarantee  of  its  stability,  which  created  a  dictatorship 
for  times  of  great  public  peril,  for  the  reason  that  such  a 
power  must  be  invoked  in  the  extremities  to  which  every  State 
is  subject,  and  that  where  it  is  wanting  it  becomes  necessary  to 
violate  the  constitution — which  is  always  of  bad  example — in 
order  to  the  salvation  of  the  State. 


484  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

"For  the  sake  of  greater  clearness,  I  quote  the  passage 
itself,  translated  by  me  from  the  French  version  in  default  of 
an  English  one,  of  the  'Treatise  on  the  Republic/  by  Machiavelli : 

"  This  part  of  the  constitution  of  Rome  deserves  to  be 
remarked,  and  ranked  in  the  number  of  those  which  contributed 
the  most  to  the  greatness  of  its  empire.  Without  an  institution  of 
this  nature,  a  State  cannot  escape  but  with  great  difficulty  from 
extraordinary  convulsions.' 

********* 
"  'It  follows  from  this  that  all  republics  must  have  in  their 
constitutions  a  like  establishment.  When  it  is  wanting  it  becomes 
necessary,  by  pursuing  the  ordinary  track,  to  see  the  constitution 
perish,  or  rather  to  depart  from  it  for  the  purpose  of  SAVING  it. 
But  in  a  State  well  constituted  no  event  must  happen  for  which 
there  shall  be  occasion  to  resort  to  extraordinary  ways ;  for  if 
extraordinary  means  do  good  for  the  moment,  their  example  con 
stitutes  a  real  evil.  The  habit  of  violating  the  constitution  to  do 
good  afterwards  authorizes  its  violation  to  color  evil.  A  Republic, 
therefore,  is  never  perfect  if  its  laws  have  not  provided  for  every 
thing,  held  the  remedy  always  in  readiness,  and  furnished  the 
means  of  employing  it.  And  I  conclude  by  saying  that  republics 
which  in  imminent  dangers  have  no  recourse  either  to  a  dictator  or 
to  like  magistrates  must  inevitably  perish  therein.' 

"The  war  power,  of  our  Constitution  is  the  equivalent  of 
the  Roman  dictatorship.  It  is,  however,  here  as  well  as  there, 
the  extreme  medicine  of  the  Constitution,  and  not  its  daily 
bread.  The  mission  of  a  republic  is  peace;  war  is  a  state  of 
violence.  To  conduct  an  army  upon  the  principles  of  republican 
equality  would  be  fatal  to  all  subordination  and  discipline.  For 
such  an  exigency  as  this,  the  normal  condition  of  a  republic 
will  not  serve.  Its  very  organization  would  forbid  it.  War  is 
anti-repuBlican  in  its  effects,  and  can  only  be  successfully  waged 
on  anti-republican  principles.  While  it  prevails  the  law  itself 
must  almost  necessarily  be  silent.  Its  code  of  laws  is  necessarily 
anti-republican.  With  such  a  Government,  therefore,  it  is  an 
unnatural  condition,  and  the  thirst  for  territorial  aggrandize 
ment  through  the  agency  of  the  sword  does  violence  to  its 
nature  and  its  life.  But  while  wars  of  conquest  are  anti-repub 
lican,  a  war  of  self-defense  to  preserve  the  nation's  life  is  a 
legitimate  because  it  is  a  necessary  one.  The  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance  would  be  fatal  to  any  Government.  When  there  is 
no  mode  left  of  supporting  the  Constitution,  except  by  suspend 
ing  the  enjoyment  of  an  individual  right,  that  right  must  yield 
to  the  occasion.  It  is  not  the  Constitution  that  authorizes  the 
suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus.  Recognizing,  as  its  framers 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     485 

did,  the  necessity  of  putting  the  highest  privilege  of  the  citizen 
in  abeyance,  they  do  not  grant  but  only  qualify  or  abridge  its 
exercises,  by  providing  that  it  shall  not  be  suspended  except  in 
the  cases  indicated.  Every  attribute  of  sovereignty  which  per 
tains  to  any  Government  that  is  supreme  may  be  exercised  when 
necessary,  unless  it  is  expressly  forbidden.  Thus  the  right  of 
eminent  domain,  as  it  is  called  by  the  publicists,  or  that  which 
authorizes  the  seizure  or  destruction  of  private  property  for 
public  uses,  and  the  kindred  power  of  taxation  which  seizes  it 
without  other  equivalent  than  the  protection  which  the  Govern 
ment  affords,  are  not  the  subjects  of  special  grant,  but  only  of 
special  limitation.  Establish  a  government  that  is  independent 
and  sovereign,  and  they  belong  to  it  of  course  because  they  are 
essential  attributes,  inseparable  from  its  very  being.  If  a 
Government  can,  however,  take  private  property,  which  is  the 
mere  product  o"f  labor,  without  compensation,  for  a  public  use, 
it  is  but  a  step  further,  and  an  easy  one,  to  take  the  producer 
himself,  as  it  does  when  it  compels  him  to  work  on  the  high 
way  on  the  ground  of  public  necessity. 

"It  is  not  disputed,  as  I  understand,  by  anybody  here,  that 
the  Government  is  entitled  to  the  military  services  of  all  its 
citizens  when  they  are  needed  for  its  defense.  The  objection 
is  only  that  a  compulsory  levy  is  anti-republican.  If  this  be 
true,  then  the  idea  of  such  a  thing  as  a  republican  Government 
is  the  wildest  of  chimeras.  Admitting  the  duty,  the  right  to 
enforce  it  is  a  corollary,  a  necessary  consequence,  in  this  case 
as  in  all  others.  The  notion  of  any  Government  at  all  pre 
supposes  supremacy,  subordination,  and  constraint.  No  Govern 
ment  ever  did  or  ever  can  rest  upon  the  mere  voluntary  princi 
ple.  All  the  duties  of  the  citizen,  except  those  merely  moral 
ones  that  are  said  to  be  of  imperfect  obligation — all  that  are 
political  at  least — rest  upon  the  idea  of  coercion.  That  is  the 
principle  of  every  law.  That  is  the  import  of  the  whole  judicial 
machinery  with  which  we  are  surrounded.  The  posse  coniitatus 
itself  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  compulsory  levy,  an  army 
improvised  to  execute  the  laws.  When  the  time  arrives — which 
will  not  be  until  the  millenium  foreshadowed  by  the  prophets, 
and  several  years  after  the  modern  Democracy  shall  have  died 
out  like  the  extinct  monsters  of  the  earlier  geological  epochs — 
when  men  shall  perform  their  duties  voluntarily,  there  will  be 
no  further  occasion  for  either  Government  or  laws.  The  notion 
that  the  mob  of  New  York,  and  the  unnatural  sympathizers  with 
the  rebellion  everywhere,  shall  not  be  compelled  to  defend  the 
Government  that  protects  them  in  all  their  rights  and  endows 
them  with  the  unwonted  privilege  of  governing  other  people,  is 
but  the  extension  of  the  argument  of  the  late  Attorney  General 


486  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  the  United  States,  and  now  reporter  of  its  Supreme  Court, 
that  there  could  be  no  coercion  of  States,  and  that  this  great 
Government  was  without  even  the  power  of  self-defense,  was 
helpless  against  the  parricide,  and  must  uncover  its  bosom  or 
wrap  its  robes  around  it  and  submit  to  death  without  a  struggle 
whenever  the  murderous  blow  was  aimed  by  the  hands  of  its  own 
children.  That  was  according  to  programme.  Both  have  the 
same  purpose  and  meaning.  That  would  have  crowned  the 
work  of  the  traitors  with  immediate  success.  This  is  a  slower 
poison,  which  would  leave  the  defense  of  the  nation  to  the  loyal 
Unionists  in  the  field,  and  transfer  the  direction  of  the  Govern 
ment  to  the  hands  of  the  auxiliaries  of  the  rebellion,  who  choose 
'to  kiss  my  lady  peace  at  home;'  who  know  that  they  can  serve 
the  cause  they  love,  with  more  effect  and  greater  safety  here 
by  affecting  loyalty,  misrepresenting  the  designs  of  the  Govern 
ment,  discouraging  volunteering,  and  denouncing  compulsory 
levies  of  men,  than  by  taking  their  places  openly  in  the  armies 
of  the  confederacy.  I  do  not  know  a  man  of  them  who  is  not 
now  an  'unconditional  Unionist'  provided  he  can  have  'the  Union 
as  it  was,'  which  he  knows  to  be  impossible,  whether  we  suc 
ceed  or  fail,  or  treat  as  he  desires  us  to  do,  and  hopes  to  bring 
about  by  cherishing  the  disease,  preserving  the  cause  of  the 
disunion,  and  declining  to  employ  the  most  necessary  and 
effective  weapon  which  Providence  has  placed  in  our  hands  for 
compelling  the  eventual  restoration  of  the  Union  itself.  Thank 
God !  the  instincts  of  the  people,  the  loyal  army  at  home,  have 
revolted  at  the  special  plea  of  the  attorney,  and  even  converted 
him  at  the  late  elections  into  the  noisiest  of  patriots  and  the 
professed  advocate  of  the  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war;  that 
is  to  say  on  peace  principles,  and  provided  you  will  refuse  to 
alloiv  the  willing  negro  or  compel  the  reluctant  and  recalcitrant 
Democrat  to  fight.  The  fear  is,  in  view  of  the  well-known  Army 
sentiment,  that  it  would  change  the  very  nature  of  the  latter  by 
showing  him  the  realities  of  war  and  making  him  a  radical,  or, 
in  other  words,  an  earnest  man. 

"We  have  the  authority  of  one  of  the  apostles  of  the  new 
Democracy  now  holding  a  seat  on  this  floor,  if  the  newspapers 
have  not  misrepresented  him,  for  the  opinion  publicly  expressed 
in  the  great  peace  convention  at  New  York,  that  a  war  Demo 
crat  is  an  impossible  thing;  and  that  any  man  who  would  draw 
a  sword  here  in  such  a  quarrel — I  mean  on  this  side  of  it — is  no 
better  than  a  Black  Republican.  And  so  it  is  that,  while  all 
the  Democracy  of  Butler  and  Burnside  and  Hooker  and  other 
fighting  generals  of  that  stamp,  who  have  proved  that  they  were 
in  earnest,  has  failed  to  shelter  them  from  the  denunciations  of 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     487 

the  rebel  papers  in  Richmond  and  New  York,  the  non-combatant 
qualities  of  the  grave-digger  of  the  Chickahominy  and  the 
loiterer  at  Bull  Run  have  made  him  the  idol  of  the  Democracy 
in  both  those  capitals.  If  the  gentleman  from  Kentucky,  who 
was  taxed  a  few  days  ago  by  his  colleagues,  with  infidelity  to 
his  pledges  to  vote  for  a  war  Democrat,  had  adverted  to  the 
sentiment  to  which  I  have  just  referred,  he  might  have  answered 
that  a  war  Democrat  was  a  myth — a  person  even  more  apocry 
phal  than  Prester  John  or  the  man  with  the  iron  mask. 

"If  it  be  true,  however,  that  a  compulsory  levy  of  men  for 
the  protection  of  the  Government  or  the  enforcement  of  its 
laws  is  anti-republican,  then  I  say  again  that  republican  govern 
ment  is  just  as  impossible  a  thing  as  a  war  Democrat.  The 
nation  which  cannot  command  the  military  services  of  its  people 
has  no  guarantee  of  life,  and  must  inevitably  perish  in  its  first 
formidable  convulsion.  To  presume  that  they  will  all  rush  to 
its  standard  at  the  first  summons,  and  that  they  will  adhere  to  it 
alike  through  good  and  ill  fortune,  alike  through  sunshine  and 
through  storm,  is  to  suppose  in  the  face  of  our  present  experience 
that  it  contains  no  bold  traitors  who  will  lift  their  hands  against 
it  in  battle,  no  cowardly  miscreants  who,  with  professions  of 
loyalty  on  their  lips,  will  adopt  the  safe  policy  of  skulking  from 
its  defense,  or  aiding  and  encouraging  those  who  are  endeavoring 
to  overthrow  it.  The  time  was  when  this  service  was  a  privilege 
of  rank  or  fortune;  when  the  soldier  served  without  wages, 
although  he  derives  his  name  from  the  idea  of  pay,  and  when 
the  craven  who  refused  to  respond  to  the  summons  of  his 
country  was  visited  with  the  dire  anathema  which  is  so  well 
paraphrased  by  the  genius  of  the  immortal  Scott,  and  finds  its 
climacteric  in  the  imprecation  'Woe  to  the  traitor,  woe !'  A 
greater  than  he  has  remarked  that  'the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone, 
and  the  age  of  sophisters  and  economists  has  succeeded.'  It  was 
not  so  at  the  commencement  of  this  rebellion. 

"I  happened  to  be  at  the  seat  of  government  of  Pennsyl 
vania  when  the  news  of  the  bombardment  of  Sumter  came  over 
the  electric  wires,  and  shook  its  capitol  as  with  an  earthquake 
throe,  and  then  sped  on  its  fiery  errand  along  the  Susquehanna 
and  the  Delaware  and  the  limpid  Allegheny,  until  it  reached 
the  distant  shore  of  the  great  lake  which  bathes  her  north 
western  confines.  The  fiery  cross  that  passed  from  hand  to 
hand  and  gathered  the  clansmen  of  the  hill  around  the  banner 
of  their  chief  never  so  traveled,  never  lighted  such  a  conflagra 
tion  as  was  kindled  by  that  message.  Before  the  setting  of 
another  sun  a  hundred  thousand  Pennsylvania  men  were  begging 
for  the  privilege  of  laying  down  their  lives  in  the  defense  of 


488  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  insulted  flag  of  their  fathers.  The  political  managers  of 
the  Democratic  party  who  had  bargained  against  coercion  and 
pledged  themselves  that  Pennsylvania  would  take  sides  with 
the  rebellious  States  were  appalled  by  the  demonstration,  and 
slunk  away  from  the  public  gaze  which  would  have  blasted 
them.  It  was  only  when  reverses  overtook  our  arms — reverses 
which  were  the  consequence  of  the  unsuccessful  effort  to 
propitiate  themselves  by  taking  counsel  with  and  employing 
men  of  the  same  type  of  thought — that  they  ventured  to  reappear, 
and  managed  to  seduce  the  loyal  men  of  the  Democratic  party 
into  the  belief  that  a  Republican  Administration  \vas  unfit  to 
conduct  the  war,  which  they  reinforced  by  the  argument  that 
it  was  obliged  to  borrow  its  generals  almost  exclusively  from 
the  Democratic  party.  If  a  draft  was  made  necessary  after 
such  a  demonstration  it  was  through  their  agency.  If  it  has 
proved  ineffective  or  unpopular  it  is  because  they  have  endeav 
ored  to  make  it  so. 

"The  country  knows  how  the  question  was  dealt  with  by  the 
Democratic  authorities  of  New  York.  It  knows,  too,  the  proc 
ess  by  which  the  Democratic  judges  of  the  supreme  court  of 
Pennsylvania  undertook,  with  indecent  precipitancy,  and  in  the 
exercise  of  a  jurisdiction  entirely  new,  to  restrain  the  execution 
of  the  law  which  authorized  it.  And  we  are  reminded  here 
from  day  to  day  that  there  are  men  among  us  who  apparently 
do  not  intend  that  the  country  shall  find  soldiers,  either  white 
or  black,  if  they  can  prevent  it;  who  insist  that  we  shall  not 
enlist  the  negro  because  it  is  a  privilege  which  belongs  only  to 
the  white  man;  who  say  to  the  white  man  that  he  ought  not  to 
volunteer  because  it  is  an  abolition  war;  and  that  the  conscrip 
tion  is  unlawful  and  unnecessary  because  we  ought  to  depend 
on  volunteers:  and  who,  after  doing  everything  in  their  power 
to  render  the  law  ineffective,  come  here  and,  with  a  coolness 
that  would  be  absolutely  refreshing  if  the  times  were  not  so 
much  out  of  joint,  demand  its  repeal  on  the  ground  that  they 
have  succeeded !  I  have  heard  it  stated  that  the  district  of  the 
gentleman  from  New  York  who  is  most  importunate  on  this 
point  has  yielded — under  his  patriotic  auspices,  no  doubt — about 
three  hundred  and  fifty  soldiers,  leaving  his  voters,  of  course, 
most  comfortably  intact,  and  in  a  condition  to  govern  the  nation 
at  least,  if  they  will  not  fight  for  it.  If  he  favors  the  war,  how 
ever,  as  he  says  he  does,  why  does  he  not  endeavor  to  amend 
the  law?  If  the  commutation  clause  is  the  difficulty  with  his 
constituents,  and  he  thinks  that  a  poor  man  can  pay  $1,000  for  a 
substitute  more  easily  than  he  can  pay  $300,  why  does  he  not 
move  to  strike  it  out? 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     489 

"I  fear  it  cannot  be  made  to  suit  gentlemen  of  that  cast  of 
mind  and  heart  unless  it  can  be  so  framed  as  to  defeat  the  object 
entirely.  Their  constitutional  scruples  will  not  allow  them  to  do 
anything  for  the  salvation  of  this  nation.  They  have  found  no 
difficulty  heretofore  in  discovering  in  that  instrument  every 
power  that  was  required  to  further  the  interests  of  the  divine 
institution.  They  had  no  difficulty  in  regard  to  the  Louisiana  or 
Florida  purchases;  none  as  to  the  annexation  of  Texas;  none 
as  to  the  assumption  of  its  debts;  none  as  to  the  purchase  or 
seizure,  at  the  expense  of  another  war  like  the  Mexican  if 
necessary,  of  the  gem  of  the  Antilles.  When  the  attempt  is 
made,  however,  to  extract  anything  valuable  from  that  instru 
ment  for  the  interests  of  humanity  or  the  preservation  of  the 
nation's  life,  it  is  no  better  than  a  caput  mortuum — without 
vitality,  full  of  obstructions,  impotent  for  good,  but  alive  all 
over,  in  all  its  members,  and  actively  omnipotent,  too,  for  mis 
chief.  These  constitutional  expounders  who  strain  at  a  gnat 
make  no  account  of  taking  in  a  camel  at  a  breakfast.  I  should 
despair  of  making  anything  out  of  them  by  a  constitutional 
argument." 

After  this  vigorous  opening  he  took  active  part  in  the 
debates  and  on  March  I4th  precipitated  the  readmission 
problem  by  offering  resolutions  on  that  subject.1  It  was 
not  until  April  28th,  however,  that  he  fully  expressed 
himself  on  the  subject  of  the  restoration  of  the  Union,  in 
a  speech  that  attracted  widespread  attention  and  was 
his  great  speech  of  the  session.  It  shows  him  seeking 
the  structural  and  strategical  truth  of  the  situation  and  is 
worthy  the  interest  it  aroused.2 

"Mr.  Speaker,"  he  began,  "I  have  some  thoughts  on  the 
state  of  the  Union,  and  the  process  of  bringing  back  to  our 
system  the  wandering  stars  which  have  shot  so  madly  from  their 
orbits,  that  I  would  have  desired  to  ventilate  on  the  occasion  of 

1  "The  Struggle  Between  President  Johnson  and  Congress  Over  Reconstruc 
tion,"  by  Charles  Ernest  Chadsey,  Ph.  D.,  Columbia  University  Studies,  Vol.  8, 
No.   i,  p.   19.     Also  Congressional  Globe  of  that  date. 

2  About  this  time  some  of  his  opponents  in  his  own  district  attempted  to 


get  Josiah  Copley  of  Allegheny  City  to  stand  for  Congress  in  his  place.  Mr. 
Copley,  in  a  letter  of  April  i8th  (1864),  refused,  saying  among  other  things, 
that  Mr.  Williams  "is,  as  you  well  know,  a  man  of  brilliant  and  highly  cul 
tivated  talents  and  unimpeachable  integrity"  and  that  they  would  deprive 
their  district  of  the  honor  of  the  great  services  they  might  reasonably  expect 
from  him.  He  reminded  them  how  they  had  kept,  during  the  existence  of  the 
old  district,  Mr.  Covode  in  office  for  four  successive  terms  in  which  his  great 
service  had  won  him  and  them  great  honor. 

This   speech   appears   at   p.    1974,    of  the   Congressional   Globe,   Thirty-eighth 
Congress,  ist  Session,  Part  3. 


4QO  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

the  discussion  here  of  the  resolution  for  the  amendment  of  the 
joint  resolution  of  July,  1862,  in  relation  to  the  extent  of  the  for 
feiture  for  treason  against  the  Government.  I  was  not  so  fortu 
nate  as  to  agree  with  a  majority  of  my  colleagues  on  the  Judici 
ary  Committee,  either  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution  or 
the  curative  virtues  of  the  amendment.  I  would  have  preferred  to 
vote  for  the  absolute  repeal  of  that  disabling  feature,  on  grounds 
outside  of  the  constitutional  provision  in  regard  to  cases  of 
judicial  attainder,  and  upon  considerations  looking  to  the  final 
settlement  of  the  great  internecine  struggle  which  has  cast  us 
loose  from  our  ordinary  moorings,  and  suggested  so  many  new 
and  dark  problems  of  State  for  our  solution.  I  thought  the 
question  of  the  times  was  involved  in  that  discussion,  as  it 
widened,  and  deepened,  and  swept  within  its  current — and  that 
too  by  an  inevitable  and  inexorable  logic — the  great  considera 
tions  of  the  status  of  the  rebel  States,  and  the  means  whereby 
the  broken  column  and  the  crumbling  arch  were  to  be  restored, 
and  the  fragments  of  the  shattered  urn  gathered  up  and  re-united, 
so  as  to  give  back,  if  possible,  its  original  strength  along  with  its 
original  perfume.  It  struck  me  that  these  were  questions  which 
must  be  first  settled  before  we  could  legislate  understandingly 
or  safely  upon  almost  any  others.  They  were  not  to  be  post 
poned  or  evaded.  We  could  escape  or  ignore  them  by  burying 
our  heads  in  the  sand  like  the  ostrich.  They  met  us  on  the 
very  threshold  at  the  organization  of  this  House.  They  have 
confronted  us  from  day  to  day,  at  every  turn,  in  the  reports  of 
committees,  where  sound  conclusions  have  been  sometimes 
reached — by  a  very  indifferent  logic,  of  course — from  unsound 
premises,  and  erroneous  conclusions  sustained  here,  almost 
without  discussion,  in  apparent  unconsciousness  of  the  dangers 
with  which  they  were  pregnant.  It  seemed  to  me  that  we  were 
at  sea,  drifting  without  rudder  or  compass  at  the  mercy  of 
the  winds  and  currents.  I  wished  a  reckoning  of  our  position. 
I  desired  some  landmarks — some  safe  anchorage  to  which  we 
might  grapple — some  common  center,  at  least,  about  which  we 
might  gravitate  in  orbits  'centric  or  eccentric/  as  our  several 
idiosyncracies  might  prompt.  I  proposed,  therefore,  to  try  the 
experiment  in  a  modest  and  suggestive  way  only,  as  becomes 
any  man  who  is  called  upon  to  deal  with  such  questions  as 
these,  of  indicating  a  star  by  which  we  might  possibly  navigate 
in  safety.  While  I  waited,  however — as  I  always  prefer  to  do — 
to  hear  what  others  might  have  to  say,  the  doors  were  closed 
upon  me,  and  debate  arrested  by  the  operation  of  the  previous 
question.  It  occurred  to  me  then  that  I  might  possibly  general 
ize  my  notions  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  them  acceptable  to  a 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN 

majority  of  this  House,  as  I  have  accordingly  attempted  to  do 
in  a  series  of  resolutions  which  I  have  had  the  honor  to  spread 
upon  your  records.  This  bill,  with  the  amendment  offered  this 
evening  by  my  colleague  [Mr.  Stevens]  by  way  of  substitute 
therefor,  comes  in  opportunely  as  a  practical  measure,  resting, 
as  I  think,  upon  the  same  general  principles,  and  enabling  me  to 
develop  the  leading  ideas  of  those  resolutions  in  the  remarks 
which  I  propose  to  make,  in  a  somewhat  desultory  way,  and 
without  reference  to  its  details,  upon  the  relations  established 
by  the  war,  and  the  rights  and  duties  bearing  upon  the  question 
of  reconstruction,  that  have  grown  out  of  it. 

"And  first,  as  to  the  status  of  the  rebel  States,  and  the  law 
which  is  to  govern  our  relations  and  intercourse,  and  sit  as 
umpire  in  the  progress  and  adjustment  of  the  pending  contro 
versy. 

"These  States  are  either  in  the  Union,  or  they  are  not. 
Some  people  may  think  it  makes  no  practical  difference  how 
we  conclude  on  this  point  while  the  war  is  flagrant.  That  is 
not  my  judgment.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  all  the  irresolution, 
all  the  unsteadiness  in  our  counsels,  all  the  doubt  and  hesitation 
and  delay,  all  the  apparent  obtuseness  and  obliquity  of  the  moral 
sense,  and  many  of  the  differences  between  good  and  loyal 
men  here,  were  mainly  referable  to  the  fact  of  the  failure  to  settle 
this  great  question,  and  settle  it  correctly  in  advance.  The  war 
was  inaugurated  on  the  theory  that  they  were  in,  when  the  great 
fact  of  war,  which  individuals  cannot  wage  in  the  social  state, 
and  peoples  do  not  wage  upon  themselves,  was  a  proclamation 
that  they  were  out.  The  Democrats  of  the  North  were  willing 
to  accept  the  fact  that  they  were  out,  without  war;  to  adopt  the 
principle  of  the  laissez-nous  faire — the  'let  us  alone' — of  the 
rebel  authorities;  and  to  treat  with  them  upon  the  idea  of  a 
reconstruction  upon  that  kind  of  compromise  which  involves 
generally  a  traffic  in  principles,  and  that  sort  of  mutuality  where 
all  is  demand  on  the  one  side  and  concession  on  the  other; 
where  everything  is  surrendered  and  nothing  obtained,  or  even 
stipulated  for  in  the  way  of  equivalent — to  treat,  in  short,  either 
for  their  return,  or  for  the  privilege  of  going  out  along  with 
them,  and  leaving  New  England  in  the  cold.  They  were  willing 
to  waive  the  right  and  the  treason  absolutely,  and  declined  the 
alternative  of  war  on  the  ground  that  the  obligation  was  an 
imperfect  one,  whose  performance  depended  upon  the  mere 
will  of  the  contracting  parties,  and  could  not  be  enforced.  With 
them  it  was  peaceable  secession,  with  reconstruction  by  treaty. 
The  ruling  thought  was,  of  course,  to  spare,  to  save,  to  do  as 
little  harm  as  possible  to  those  who  were  not  our  enemies,  but 


4Q2  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

our  brethren — sisters,  perhaps,  I  should  say,  albeit  a  little  'way 
ward' — whose  anger  was  to  be  kissed  away — or  sweethearts, 
rather,  who  were  to  be  mollified  into  tenderness  by  dulcet 
phrases  and  costly  love  tokens,  or  hugged  into  quietude  by  the 
anaconda  process  of  compression,  or  the  sublime  mysteries  of 
strategy.  The  rebels  were  Democrats,  whom  it  would  be  a 
sin  to  kill,  and  a  greater  sin  to  rob  of  their  sacred  property  in 
slaves.  Better  a  hundred  thousand  free  white  northern  youth 
should  die,  than  one  negro  slave  should  be  lost  to  his  proprietor, 
or  employed  in  arms  against  him.  To  carry  out  this  policy  we 
wanted  conservative  generals  who  would  be  sure  to  hurt  nobody, 
and  saw  men  made  heroes — by  newspaper  process,  as  great  men 
are  now  made  since  that  manufacture  seems  to  have  passed  out 
of  the  hands  of  Providence — not  because  they  fought,  and 
fought  successfully,  but  because  they  would  not  fight  at  all. 
We  wanted  generals  who  had  constitutional  scruples  about  the 
right  of  invading  the  sacred  soil  of  a  sovereign  State;  who  had 
'kind  regards'  for  the  worst  and  meanest  of  felons;  and  were 
ready  to  grant  paroles  of  honor  to  men  who,  by  an  act  of  treason 
intensified  by  ingratitude  and  perjury,  had  basely  deserted  the 
flag  they  were  sworn  to  defend,  as  no  mere  Swiss,  no  soldier 
of  fortune  who  hired  out  his  steel,  could  have  done  without  a 
deep  stain  upon  his  escutcheon.  But  while  we  were  dealing 
with  the  heresies  and  subtleties  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
resolutions  of  1798 — those  fruitful  sources  of  our  present  woes — 
instead  of  striking  at  once  at  the  heart  of  the  rebellion,  that 
rebellion,  thus  nursed  and  cherished  and  rocked  and  dandled 
by  ourselves,  was  swelling  in  volume,  and  organizing  and 
hardening  into  consistence  behind  the  storm-cloud,  which  was 
gathering  and  blackening  and  muttering  its  thunders  within 
sight  and  hearing  of  this  very  Capitol,  where  an  American 
Congress  was  legislating  under  its  shadow.  But  the  light  which 
\vas  struck  out  by  the  collision  of  hostile  bayonets,  struggling 
up  through  the  haze  in  which  we  were  enveloped,  began  to 
dawn  slowly  upon  the  country.  It  was  soon  reflected  back  upon 
these  Chambers,  and  statesmen  began  to  feel  that  they  were  in 
the  presence  of  a  great  fact,  that  could  not  be  conjured  down 
by  empiricism,  or  reasoned  down  except  by  the  logic  of  artillery. 
But  still  they  hesitated  to  accept  the  fact,  and  the  law  of  the 
last  session,  halting  between  the  two  opinions — beginning  with 
the  idea  of  treason,  and  ending  in  the  alternative  of  war — 
although  right  in  itself,  was  but  the  expression  of  the  yet  linger 
ing  doubt  whether  these  States  were  still  in  the  Union  or  out 
of  it. 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     493 

"How  does  the  case  then  stand  upon  the  facts  ?  It  cannot  be 
questioned,  I  think,  that  in  this  view  the  severance  is  or  has 
been  as  complete — the  spes  recuperandi,  the  mere  hope  of 
recovery,  excepted — as  if  our  forces  had  been  withdrawn,  and 
their  independence  recognized.  They  have  seized  our  property, 
and  expelled  us  from  their  territories.  They  have  declined  the 
Federal  jurisdiction,  and  ceased  to  live  under  the  Federal  law. 
They  have  altered  their  constitutions  of  government,  and  trans 
ferred  their  allegiance  to  a  foreign  power.  They  have  invaded  our 
soil.  They  have  claimed  and  exercised,  with  the  consent  of  the 
great  Powers  of  Europe,  the  rights  of  belligerents  upon  the  ocean. 
Under  the  stern  logic  of  facts  we  have  assented  to  all  this,  by 
releasing  the  crews  of  their  privateers,  instead  of  dealing  with 
them  as  pirates,  and  exchanging  prisoners  captured  on  land, 
instead  of  hanging  them  as  traitors.  We  have  distinguished 
between  the  mere  guerrilla  and  the  commissioned  soldier  of  the 
confederacy.  We  have  blockaded  their  ports.  Treating  them  as 
a  government  dc  facto,  and  therefore  entitled  to  the  allegiance 
of  all  its  citizens,  we  have  allowed  them  to  shoot  as  deserters, 
without  retaliation,  the  unwilling  conscripts  who  have  fled  to  our 
arms  for  the  protection  which  we  were  bound  to  give  them; 
we  have  interdicted  commercial  intercourse  with  them  on  the 
part  of  the  citizens  of  the  loyal  States;  and  we  have  put  them 
by  our  legislation,  one  and  all,  without  distinction  as  to  loyalty, 
under  the  ban  of  the  Union,  as  alien  enemies.  Nor  have  we 
been  guilty  of  any  inconsistency  herein.  The  revolt  was  not  of 
individuals,  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  ordinary  process  of  law, 
like  the  whiskey  insurrection,  with  which  it  has  been  improperly 
compared.  It  rose  at  once  to  the  dimensions  of  a  civil  war.  It 
was  the  result  of  the  corporate,  political  action  of  organized 
communities,  sweeping  the  reluctant  and  the  innocent  into  its 
impetuous  current,  and  then  merging  the  individuality — dissolv 
ing,  as  I  think,  the  very  life — of  these  communities,  in  the  revo 
lutionary  act  of  compounding  them  into  a  separate  and  inde 
pendent  nationality.  As  such  we  have  treated  with  it  in  the 
matter  of  exchanges,  and  ignored  accordingly  the  members  of 
which  it  was  composed.  We  could  not  do  otherwise  under 
the  law  to  which  the  insurgents  successfully  appealed,  when 
they  repudiated  the  authority  of  any  common  superior,  and 
carried  their  case  before  that  dread  tribunal  of  nations,  where 
the  sword  is  the  arbiter,  and  the  voice  of  God  and  humanity, 
thundering  out  of  the  smoke  and  carnage  of  the  battle-field,  is 
the  only  one  that  can  be  listened  to  in  the  adjustment  of  the 
controversy. 


494  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"And  now  let  us  inquire  for  a  moment  how  the  public  law 
of  Christendom,  as  declared  in  the  opinions  of  the  publicists,  and 
the  practice  of  enlightened  nations,  squares  with  the  great 
facts  to  which  I  have  referred. 

"It  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  the  most  eminent  of  these 
writers  are  agreed  in  the  opinion,  that  the  parties  to  a  civil 
war,  having  no  common  judge,  or  common  superior  on  earth, 
'must  necessarily  be  considered  as  constituting,  at  least  for  a 
time,  two  separate  bodies,  two  distinct  societies/  and  that  'when 
a  nation  becomes  divided  into  two  parties  absolutely  independent, 
and  no  longer  acknowledging  a  common  superior,  the  State  is 
dissolved,  and  the  war  between  the  two  parties  stands  on  the 
same  ground,  in  every  respect,  as  a  public  war  between  two 
different  nations.'  This  is  the  language  of  Vattel,  (pp.  425, 
427,)  and  the^learned  Barbeyrac,  in  his  notes  on  the  treatise  of 
Grotius,  (Book  3,  cap.  6,  sec.  27,)  affirms  the  doctrine  by  the 
remark  that  'in  case  of  the  rising  of  a  considerable  part  of  the 
State  against  the  sovereign,  as  for  an  alleged  violation  of  the 
fundamental  law  of  the  nation,  the  Government  is  dissolved, 
and  the  State  divided  into  two  distinct,  independent  bodies ;  and 
much  more  does  that  take  place  in  the  civil  wars  of  a  republican 
State,  in  which  the  war  immediately,  of  itself,  dissolves  the 
sovereignty  that  subsists  solely  in  the  union  of  its  members.' 
It  is  in  direct  antagonism  therefore  to  the  law  which  governs 
now,  as  to  the  facts,  to  say  that  these  States  are  still  in  the 
Union  as  they  were  before.  The  theory  that  this  Union  was 
indissoluble  refers  only  to  the  right,  to  its  organic  law,  and  to 
the  purposes  of  the  men  who  welded  these  States  together;  but 
never  was  intended  to  imply  that  it  could  not  be  ruptured  by 
violence — as  it  has  unquestionably  been — leaving  to  the  wronged 
and  adhering  States  their  remedy  for  the  breach,  not  by  enfor 
cing  a  specific  performance — which  is  impossible — but  by  the 
recovery  of  the  territory  which  is  ours  by  the  contract,  and  the 
expulsion  of  the  delinquents,  with  the  forfeiture  of  all  their 
rights  in  and  under  the  Union,  from  which  they  have  with 
drawn.  To  say  with  a  gentleman  from  Kentucky,  [Mr.  WADS- 
WORTH]  that  this  is  an  admission  of  the  right  to  secede,  is  to 
confound  the  fact,  which  is  one  thing,  with  the  right,  which  is 
another.  To  assert  with  the  gentleman  from  Missouri,  [Mr. 
BLAIR]  that  this  is  a  concession  of  their  independence,  which 
would  authorize  their  recognition  by  foreign  Powers,  is  to  forget 
that  we  have  rights  which  no  violation  of  the  contract  by  the 
other  party  can  destroy.  It  would  be  just  as  sensible  to  insist 
that  a  judgment  of  outlawry  was  a  release  of  the  traitor  from 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     495 

his  allegiance,  and  authorized  the  Government  to  which  he  fled, 
to  espouse  his  quarrel  and  adopt  him  as  its  citizen. 

"Upon  this  question  of  the  forfeiture  of  political  rights, 
some  further  light  may  be  borrowed  from  the  practice  of  nations 
in  the  application  of  the  jus  postliminii,  which  refers,  according 
to  Grotius  and  Bynkershoek,  as  well  as  to  cases  of  territorial 
recapture  where  a  whole  community  is  involved,  as  to  those 
where  the  goods  of  a  subject,  once  seized  as  prize  of  war,  are 
afterwards  retaken  from  the  hands  of  the  captors.  And  here, 
I  think  it  will  be  found  that  even  the  provinces  of  a  confedera 
tion  which  have  been  wrested  from  it  by  an  enemy,  have  not 
always  been  reinstated  in  their  original  privileges — as  reason 
would  seem  to  adjudge  that  they  ought  to  be. 

"Thus,  the  inhabitants  of  the  district  of  Drenthe  were  in 
1580  admitted  into  the  confederation  of  Utrecht,  but  their 
country  was  afterwards  invaded  and  occupied  by  the  Spaniards. 
After  the  enemy  had  withdrawn  and  evacuated  their  territory, 
although  it  seemed  clear  to  Bynkershoek  that  they  had  recovered 
all  their  former  rights  by  virtue  of  the  law  of  postliminy,  never 
theless,  although  they  several  times  petitioned  the  States 
General  to  be  readmitted  into  the  Union,  no  order  was  taken, 
and  afterwards,  in  1650,  when  their  deputies  attended  at  a  meet 
ing  of  the  States,  they  were  refused  admittance. 

"Again,  the  provinces  of  Guelderland,  Utrecht,  and 
Overyssel,  were  taken  by  the  French  and  afterwards  recovered. 
Bynkershoek  remarks  thereupon,  that  while  they  were  in  the 
power  of  the  enemy  they  certainly  were  not  entitled  to  their 
former  rights  as  confederates,  and  on  that  account  their  dele 
gates  were  very  properly  ordered  not  to  attend  any  longer  at 
the  meetings  of  the  States  General;  but  when  they  came  again 
into  the  possession  of  the  States,  they  were  readmitted  by  a 
decree  of  that  body,  restoring  them  to  their  former  municipal 
and  confederate  rights,  except  that  Guelderland  was  deprived 
of  one  vote  in  the  assembly,  and  several  other  conditions  were 
imposed,  one  of  which  was  that  they  should  swear  anew  to  the 
articles  of  the  confederation  as  if  they  were  admitted  for  the 
first  time. 

"These,  however,  were  cases  of  seizure  and  occupation  by 
an  enemy;  ours,  of  a  voluntary  abdication  of  Federal  rights, 
and  an  organized  resistance  by  governmental  action  to  the 
Federal  law.  There  is  no  case  here,  therefore,  for  the  applica 
tion  of  the  law  of  postliminy.  Some  of  these  States,  -on  the 
contrary,  constructed  out  of  Territories  purchased  by  this  Gov 
ernment,  were  lifted  from  the  posture  of  subject  and  dependent 
provinces  upon  the  platform  of  the  Union,  on  the  condition  of 


496  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

obedience  to  its  laws,  and  by  their  voluntary  abdication  of  the 
privileges  so  conferred,  have,  as  it  seems  to  me,  by  an  inevitable 
logic,  lapsed  back  again  into  the  territorial  condition.  There 
is  no  ground  upon  which  it  can  be  claimed  that  any  of  them 
have  been  the  victims  of  a  public  enemy,  who  has  wrested  them 
from  the  possession  of  their  local  governments.  The  action  was 
corporate  and  social.  It  was  the  local  governments  themselves 
that  sinned.  Where  they  have  been  recaptured,  the  local  Gov 
ernors  have  fled,  the  local  organizations  have  been  dissolved, 
and  their  Territories  are  now  under  military  occupation  by  the 
armies  of  the  Union,  or  under  provisional  governors 
appointed  by  the  Executive.  This  fact  alone,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
involves  the  admission  that  they  are  no  longer  in  the  Union. 
It  they  are,  that  occupation  is  unlawful.  If  their  governments 
are  dissolved,  however,  they  must,  of  course,  be  reconstructed 
under  the  auspices  of  the  conquering  power,  and  that  not  by 
the  Executive,  but  by  the  Legislature  of  the  Union,  whose 
sword  he  bears,  and  which  only,  consistently  with  the  genius  of 
our  institutions,  the  past  practice  of  the  Government,  and  the 
letter  as  well  as  spirit  of  the  Constitution,  can  venture  to  deter 
mine  what  use  shall  be  made  of  the  Territories  conquered  by  it, 
and  when  and  upon  what  terms  they  shall  be  readmitted  into  full 
communion  as  members  of  this  Government.  It  is  not  certainly 
the  military  power  that  is  to  reorganize,  and  modify,  and 
breathe  new  life  into  their  defunct  constitutions.  Until  the  end 
of  subjugation  is  achieved  and  the  resistance  entirely  overcome, 
so  as  to  give  place  safely  to  the  re-establishment  of  the  civil 
authority,  a  military  occupation  is  indispensable,  of  course. 
When  that  period  arrives,  the  sword  must  be  sheathed,  and  the 
Territory  return  to  the  direction  of  the  law-making  power, 
which  will  prescribe  the  rule  for  its  government,  and  allow  to 
its  people  the  privilege  of  reorganizing  under  republican  forms. 
I  call  it  Territory  and  invoke  the  law  that  governs  there,  because 
I  know  of  no  intermediate  condition.  To  permit  any  executive 
officer  to  declare  its  law,  and  set  it  in  motion,  and  place  it  under 
the  control  of  a  minority — a  mere  tithe  of  its  citizens — with 
power  to  send  delegates  to  Congress  with  representation  unim 
paired  and  unaffected — even  though  he  should  re-enact  a  part  of 
its  abrogated  constitution — would  be,  as  I  think,  a  monstrous 
anomaly,  a  violation  of  fundamental  principles,  and  a  precedent 
fraught  with  great  danger  to  republican  liberty.  Here  is  the 
dilemma.  To  come  back  into  the  Union,  it  must  either  be  born 
anew  or  come  back  with  all  its  rights  unimpaired,  except  those 
material  ones  which  have  been  destroyed  in  the  progress  of  the 
war.  There  is,  I  think,  no  middle  ground,  as  there  is  no  power 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     497 

either  here  or  elsewhere  to  prescribe  terms,  which  shall  abridge 
the  rights  or  privileges  of  a  State  that  has  not  been  out  of  the 
Union,  or  returns  to  it  in  virtue  of  its  original  title. 

''When  I  suggest,  however,  that  these  States  are  out,  it  is 
with  this  important  qualification,  that  they  are  out  in  point  of  fact, 
with  a  forfeiture  of  all  their  frrnchises  as  members  thereof,  when 
ever  the  issue  of  battle  shall  have  been  decided  against  them ;  but 
subjects  o-f  it  still — members,  if  you  choose — in  legal  contempla 
tion,  so  far  as  regards  their  obligations  and  duties  under  the 
Constitution,  and  our  right  to  visit  them  with  punishment  for  the 
delinquency,  proportioned  to  the  magnitude  of  their  offense. 
They  are  in  for  correction,  but  not  for  heirship;  just  like  the 
unnatural  child  who  has  attempted  the  crime  of  parricide,  and 
only  succeeded  in  dyeing  his  murderous  hands  in  the  blood  of  his 
loyal  brethren.  It  is  bad  logic  to  infer  that  because  they  are 
out  without  our  consent,  and  have  forfeited  their  rights  thereby, 
that  fact  must  be  attended  with  a  like  forfeiture  of  our  own. 
Nor  would  I,  as  already  intimated,  be  understood  as  admitting 
that  they  are  out  as  to  foreign  Powers,  who  must  respect  our 
title j  although  our  possession  may  be  ousted,  and  treat  the  con 
test  in  all  respects  as  a  domestic  one.  No  American  of  the  right 
spirit  would  allow  even  a  question  of  this  sort  to  enter  our  diplo 
matic  correspondence  with  foreign  powers,  or  consent  to  com 
promise  our  dignity  and  self-respect — which  are  at  last  the  best 
security  of  nations — by  uncovering  the  maternal  bosom  to  the 
rude  and  insulting  gaze  of  the  stranger,  and  inviting  his  inter 
ference,  either  by  misrepresenting  the  aims  of  our  loyal  citizens, 
or  beseechingly  deprecating  his  displeasure.  I  trust  that  our 
just  pride  as  a  people  will  not  be  again  wounded  by  the  produc 
tion  of  another  book  like  the  diplomatic  confessions  of  1862. 

"It  is  suggested,  however,  by  a  gentleman  from  New  York, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  House,  (Mr.  Fernando  Wood,)  that 
while  we  on  this  side  are  claiming  to  be  for  the  Union,  the 
enunciation  of  these  doctrines  by  my  able  colleague  (Mr. 
Stevens)  amounts  to  a  declaration  that  we  are  no  longer  a 
Union  party.  The  meaning  of  this — if  it  means  anything — is, 
that  because  the  rebel  States  are  out,  without  any  agency  of 
ours,  but  with  a  large  share  of  the  responsibility  on  the 
heads  of  those,  who,  like  the  gentleman  himself,  encouraged  the 
defection  by  their  servility,  or  by  the  assurance  that  they  were 
opposed  to  coercion — as  they  oppose  it  now — and  taught  them  to 
believe  that  they  could  go  out  with  perfect  impunity,  and  that 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania  would  go  out  along  with  them — the 
mere  statement  of  the  fact  that  they  were  out,  is  evidence  that 
the  party  of  the  Administration  on  this  floor  is  not  in  favor  of 


498  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  preservation  of  the  Union !  Well,  we  are  in  favor,  at  all 
events,  of  preserving  all  that  is  left  of  it,  and  intend,  with  the 
blessing  of  God,  to  win  back  the  residue,  and  pass  it  through  the 
fire  until  it  shall  come  out  purged  of  the  malignant  element  that 
has  unfitted  it  for  freedom.  But  what  does  the  honorable  gentle 
man  himself — what  do  those  who  vote  with  him  really  think  on 
this  subject?  Does  he — do  they  believe  that  the  rebel  States 
are  not  out?  If  he  does  not  look  upon  them  as  a  new  and  inde 
pendent  power  in  the  commonwealth  of  nations,  why  does  he 
propose  to  treat  with  them — not  with  the  revolting  States  singly, 
but  with  'the  authorities  at  Richmond/  How  is  it  that  in  his 
own  resolution  he  proposes,  in  totidem  verbis,  the  'offer  to  the 
insurgents  of  an  opportunity  to  return  to  the  Union  ?'  Who  are 
the  'authorities  at  Richmond  ?'  Will  -he  inform  us  whether  they 
are  a  people  known  to  our  Constitution,  or  how  these  States  are 
to  return  to  the  Union,  if  they  were  never  out  of  it  ?  His  tongue 
confesses  it  unwittingly — I  will  not  say  like  Balaam's,  who 
blessed  when  he  intended  to  curse — but  just  as  did  that  of  the 
Louisiana  claimant  who,  professing  to  rest  on  the  same  doctrine, 
stood  before  this  House  unconsciously  testifying  in  the  same 
way.  He  stands,  therefore,  self-condemned  by  his  own  logic, 
as  no  Union  man.  I  will  allow  him,  however,  the  advantage  of 
the  admission  that  it  is  but  a  slipshod  logic  that  cannot  dis 
tinguish  between  the  laiv  and  the  fact.  But  that  is  true  of  him 
self  and  his  party  which  he  unjustly  charges  upon  my  colleague. 
The  difference  is  just  this,  that  although  the  rebels  have  spurned 
and  spit  upon  their  northern  auxiliaries,  rejected  all  their  over 
tures,  and  declared  that  they  will  no  longer  associate  with  them 
upon  any  terms,,  and  are  not  willing  that  they  should  even  come 
'betwixt  the  wind  and  their  nobility/  he  wishes  to  treat  for  the 
privilege  of  serving  them,  while  we  propose  to  fight  for  the  pur 
pose  of  chastising  them  into  submission.  This  may  be  the 
result  only  of  a  difference  of  taste;  but  all  history  attests  that 
there  always  are,  and  there  always  will  be,  men  who  love  to 
wear  the  livery  of  a  master,  and  are  uncomfortable  without  it; 
who  regard  the  collar  as  a  badge  of  distinction,  and  would  at  all 
events,  rather  carry  it,  than  quarrel  with  it.  No  wonder,  there 
fore,  at  the  opinion  so  often  expressed  by  men  of  this  sort  in 
relation  to  the  black  man,  that  he  would  neither  run  away,  nor 
bear  arms  against  his  master,  or  anybody  else.  They  did  him 
injustice  in  supposing  that  he  was  like  themselves.  Pompey, 
who  was  an  involuntary  slave,  is  tending  toward  the  North 
star  with  a  musket  in  his  hand,  while  his  white  non-combatant 
substitute — a  voluntary  slave — is  rushing  southward  with  the 
olive-branch  in  his  hand,  into  the  patriarchal  arms. 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  OX  LINCOLN     499 

"The  objection  rests,  however,  as  I  suppose,  upon  the  remark 
that  our  right  to  deal  with  the  rebel  States  after  they  shall 
have  been  reduced  to  submission  by  force  of  arms,  is  not  a 
question  under  the  Constitution,  but  outside  of  it.  I  desire  to 
say,  once  for  all,  that  1  do  not  concur  in  this  opinion,  because 
I  find  the  war  power  in  the  Constitution  with  all  its  incidental 
consequences.  If  it  is  not  there,  the  case  is  without  remedy. 

"The  doctrine  of  my  colleague,  that  these  States  are  out  of 
the  Union,  may  seem  at  first  blush  extreme.  Some  people  may 
think  it  radical,  but  it  is  none  the  less  palatable  to  me  on  that 
account.  War  is  a  radical  disease,  and  radical  diseases  are 
only  to  be  treated  by  radical  means.  One  earnest  and  decided 
man  is  worth,  in  times  like  these,  a  regiment  of  temporizers; 
and  that  is  precisely  the  reason  why  the  inherent  weakness  and 
poverty  of  the  insurgents  have  been  able  to  match  the  over 
whelming  numbers  and  resources  of  the  North.  These  are  no 
times  for  what  are  falsely  called  conservative  men,  just  because 
they  are  wedded  to  old  abuses,  and  only  hug  them  the  closer  when 
they  have  proved  most  destructive.  I  like  bold  thinkers  and 
operators.  Timid  counsels  have  ruined  many  a  State ;  they  have 
never  saved  one,  and  never  will.  It  may  be  a  paradox,  but  if 
conservatism  has  ever  operated  to  save  a  nation  in  such  a  crisis 
as  ours,  it  has  only  been,  as  here,  by  acting  as  the  dead-weight 
upon  the  ploughshare,  which  has  retarded  its  progress,  but  made 
it  run  so  deep  into  the  virgin  soil  as  to  make  its  work  a  radical 
one.  The  man  who  is  ahead  of  his  contemporaries  is  always 
denounced  as  a  daring  and  dangerous  innovator,  and  happy  if 
he  is  not  martyred,  as  the  apostle  of  a  new  faith,  for  the  singu 
larity  of  his  opinions.  I  beg  gentlemen  to  reflect,  however, 
whether  there  is  any  solid  ground  short  of  this  on  which  they 
can  put  down  their  feet  with  safety.  The  'middle  passage' — it 
was  the  same,  I  believe,  in  which  the  negro  was  heaved  over 
board — the  (medio  tutissimus  ibis' — the  path  of  traffic  and  of 
compromise — is  not  the  one  which  we  can  hold  safely  in  a 
storm  like  this.  If  these  States  are  in  the  Union,  with  all  their 
rights  and  privileges  unimpaired,  they  may  return  to-morrow, 
even  without  submission,  after  being  conquered  in  the  field,  to 
conquer  their  conquerors  in  the  councils  of  the  nation.  The 
most  accomplished  of  the  Roman  poets  remarks  that  'conquered 
Greece  subdued  her  barbarian  conqueror,  and  introduced  the  arts 
into  unpolished  Latium.'  The  contrary  will  be  the  case  here. 
The  barbarian  will  come  back  into  your  Halls.  The  northern 
Democrat  will  rush  into  his  arms.  The  two  elements,  like 
kindred  drops,  by  an  attraction  a  good  deal  stronger  than  that 
of  miscegenation,  will  melt  incontinently  into  one.  The  old  bar- 


5OO  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

gain  will  be  renewed — 'Give  us  the  spoils,  and  you  may  take 
the  honors  and  the  power,  and  rob  the  northern  soldier,  the 
sick,  and  the  maimed,  the  widows  and  the  orphans  of  the  gallant 
dead,  of  the  miserable  pittance  which  this  Government  is  pledged 
to  provide  for  them.'  The  proclamation  of  freedom  will  be 
revoked;  your  acts  of  Congress  repealed;  your  debt  repudiated 
unless  you  will  assume  theirs;  and  yourselves,  perhaps,  ejected 
from  these  Halls.  The  result  is  already  foreshadowed  in  the 
events  of  the  present  Congress,  wherein — not  to  speak  of  other 
of  your  past  experiments  in  dealing  with  that  element — a  signer 
of  the  secession  ordinance  of  Louisiana,  permitted  to  walk  the 
streets  of  this  capital,  and  enter  this  Hall,  as  others  were  per 
mitted,  less  than  three  years  ago,  to  go  out  of  it,  unquestioned — 
was  allowed  to  vote  upon  a  bogus  certificate  of  a  bogus  governor, 
and  to  vote  negatively  with  the  Democracy  upon  the  qualifica 
tions  of  the  members  of  Congress  now  representing  the  loyal 
State  of  Maryland.  And  the  effect  will  be,  that  for  all  your 
great  expenditures,  and  all  your  bloody  sacrifices,  you  will  have 
won  back,  not  peace,  but  a  master — the  'old  master/  in  negro 
phraseology — who  governed  you  before — as  turbulent,  as  vin 
dictive,  and  as  ferocious  as  ever.  If  they  had  chosen  to  remain 
with  us,  under  the  idea  that  they  were  not  out,  they  might,  by 
their  superior  tact  and  address,  and  their  habitual  control  of 
the  northern  Democrats,  have  so  embarrassed  us,  as  to  render 
it  utterly  impossible  to  carry  on  a  war  against  them.  If  they 
had  consented  to  return  in  answer  to  the  prayers  of  their 
bereaved  friends,  or  to  the  message  sent  through  Count  Mercier, 
to  Richmond — about  which  an  adjourned  question  of  veracity  is 
still,  I  believe,  depending  between  very  friendly  belligerents, 
who  exchange  hostile  messages  in  the  improved  shape  of  invi 
tations  to  State  dinners — we  should  have  been  lost.  I  have 
always  regarded  it  as  a  special  providence  that  the  arrogance 
engendered  by  their  ownership  of  men,  both  white  and  black, 
and  the  contempt  with  which  they  looked  upon  their  vassels 
here,  should  have  prevented  them  from  retaining  or  returning 
to  their  places  in  Congress,  or  even  holding  out  the  idea  that 
a  compromise  was  possible.  Say  that  they  are  in  the  Union 
as  before  and  all  your  sacrifices  have  been  idle,  and  all  the 
blood  spilled  by  you  has  sunk  into  the  earth  in  vain.  Bring 
them  back,  and  you  cannot  even  bind  them  by  gratitude,  or 
purge  them  by  oaths,  of  which  they  make  no  account,  as  the 
whole  history  of  the  rebellion,  which  began  in  perjury,  abun 
dantly  shows — which  are  like  the  ribbons  that  were  insultingly 
stretched  by  the  Parisian  mob  in  front  of  the  Tuileries  to  pro 
tect  the  ill-fated  king  and  queen  of  France — and  which  grave 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      5OI 

Senators  have  so  recently  denied  your  power  to  prescribe.  The 
President  has  dealt  kindly  with  the  neutrals.  Has  he  propitiated 
any  of  them?  Our  predecessors  here  have  followed  the  exam 
ple.  Look  at  the  facts  attending  our  organization,  and  say 
whether  even  confidence  and  charity  are  followed  by  either 
gratitude  or  loyalty.  No,  you  must  throw  the  dissevered  frag 
ments — the  'disjecta  membra' — of  this  great  Government,  into 
the  caldron,  with  a  hot  fire  beneath,  and  you  may  evaporate  the 
virus,  but  not  otherwise. 

'Taking  them,  however,  to  be  out,  or  that  the  case  has 
passed  from  under  the  municipal,  into  the  domain  of  public  law, 
what  is  the  authority  which  that  law  gives  us  over  the  rights 
and  property  of  an  enemy? 

"Before  entering  on  this  question,  however,  I  desire  to  say 
a  few  words  in  relation  to  the  supplementary  resolution  which 
we  have  been  endeavoring  to  amend.  I  would  have  been  glad, 
as  I  have  already  stated,  to  vote  for  its  unconditional  repeal, 
for  the  reason  that  the  confiscation  and  distribution  of  the  great 
baronial  possessions  of  the  rebel  leaders  were,  in  my  judgment, 
an  essential  element  in  any  feasible  plan  of  reconstruction,  and 
that  there  were  other  means  under  the  Constitution  than  the 
very  inadequate  one  of  the  judicial  attainder,  to  reach  the 
estates  of  those  who  had  broken  the  covenant  between  the 
Government  and  people.  That,  as  it  seems  to  me,  was  the 
opinion  of  the  men  who  framed  the  original  act  of  1862.  It  is 
tolerably  clear,  I  think,  from  the  history  of  the  resolution  by 
which  it  was  unfortunately  supplemented,  that  it  was  not  in 
accordance  with  the  sentiments  of  that  Congress — as  I  think  it 
is  not  with  the  opinion  of  the  present  one,  or  of  a  majority  of  the 
people  whom  it  represents.  It  was  thrown  in  only,  as  I  under 
stand  it,  to  remove  the  scruples  of  the  Executive,  and  to  make 
the  best  bargain  that  could  be  had  at  that  time.  That  was 
eighteen  months  ago.  But  nothing  was  ever  said  more  truly 
than  that  'times  change,  and  we  along  with  them/  even  to  our 
material  framework,  which  we  shift  off  as  well  as  our  opinions. 
The  world  does  move — as  Galileo  still  insisted  even  when  he  was 
obliged  to  recant  his  astronomical  heresies — although  it  some 
times  moves  slowly.  The  President  moves  too — and  slowly  also 
— as  he  needs  must,  who  is  called  upon  'to  bear  upon  the  shoul 
ders  the  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies.'  Everything  moves — 
except  some  of  our  generals — because  war  is  a  great  teacher, 
and  thought  quickens  and  ripens  rapidly  under  the  fires  of  revo 
lution.  Even  our  reluctant  and  unsympathizing  friends  on  the 
other  side,  are  hurried  along  by  the  resistless  current  that 
sweeps  our  statesmen  like  straws  upon  its  surface.  Nay,  even 


5O2  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

some  of  my  own  Republican  auxiliaries  on  this  side,  have  been 
drifting  with  the  tide  into  waters  too  deep  to  have  been  ever 
searched  by  the  plummet  of  conservatism.  But  a  little  over 
three  years  ago,  as  I  can  testify,  he  was  a  bold  man — as  he  was 
sure  to  be  a  sadly  abused  one — who  would  have  invoked  coercion 
by  force  of  arms,  and  ventured  to  hint  at  the  possibility  of  the 
negro,  as  the  soldier  who  was  to  be  thrown  at  last,  like  the 
sword  of  Brennus,  as  the  make-weight  into  the  scale.  Two 
years  ago,  there  was  scarcely  a  Republican  in  this  House  who 
would  have  voted  for  the  latter  proposition.  One  year  ago 
every  gentleman  on  the  other  side  would  have  revolted  at  it,  as 
they  had  done  before  the  bombardment  of  Sumter  against 
coercion.  Ten  months  ago,  the  unarmed  and  defenseless  negro 
was  flying  like  a  hunted  stag,  and  flying  for  his  life,  before  a 
cowardly  and  brutal  mob,  in  the  streets  of  the  very  metropolis 
of  the  western  hemisphere.  Two  years  ago,  the  dark-skinned 
child  of  the  tropics  was  struggling  slowly  up  to  the  unwonted 
privilege  of  cracking  his  whip  over  a  Federal  mule-team,  to  the 
horror  of  all  political  ethnologists  and  unbelieving  conservatives, 
who  howled  denunciations  at  the  Pathfinder  of  the  West,  and 
shouted  hosannas  to  the  loiterer  at  Manassas,  and  the  author 
and  promulgator  of  Order  'No.  3.'  Now  Scipio  (Africanus) 
has  a  musket  in  his  hand,  and  stands  revealed  as  a  soldier  and 
a  man,  of  higher  physical  and  moral  type  than  his  persecutors 
themselves,  in  the  light  of  the  fiery  surge  that  swept  the 
trenches  of  Fort  Wagner,  and  under  the  iron  storm  that  flashed 
from  the  blazing  ramparts  of  Port  Hudson.  The  flesh  that  fed 
and  crisped  and  crackled  in  the  flames  of  a  metropolitan  auto  da 
fe,  has  turned  out  to  be  human,  and  the  blood  that  was  licked 
up  by  the  devouring  element,  to  be  as  red  and  warm  as  our  own, 
the  physiologists  and  philosophers  to  the  contrary  notwithstand 
ing.  And  now  behold  the  miracle !  But  yesterday,  as  it  were, 
only  forty-one  members  of  the  negro-hating,  and  negro-dis 
paraging  party  on  this  floor — hating  him  in  the  name  of  Democ 
racy  as  a  freeman,  but  loving  him  too  much  as  a  slave  to  peril 
his  valuable  life — could  be  brought  to  vote  against  buckling  the 
harness  of  the  Union  on  his  back,  and  anointing  him  as  the 
soldier  of  the  great  Republic.  Yes,  the  world  does  move,  and 
the  Executive  along  with  it.  Looking,  as  he  does  now,  from  a 
different  stand-point  from  that  occupied  by  him  eighteen  months 
ago,  I  would  not  despair  of  his  approval  of  a  bill  to  repeal  abso 
lutely  the  unfortunate,  emasculating,  and,  as  I  think,  ill-advised 
joint  resolution  of  1862.  With  all  his  habitual  caution — yield 
ing  slowly  to  his  strong  convictions  of  duty  and  taking  no 
step  backward — he  has  made  even  greater  strides  than  this. 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     503 

I  have  confidence  in  his  judgment,  as  the  nation  has  in  his 
integrity.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  he  was  a  little  slow,  in 
a  case  where  promptitude  was  worth  armies ;  although  I  could 
well  appreciate  the  sense  of  responsibility  that  must  necessarily 
weigh  upon  the  man  who  holds  a  trust  the  most  responsible  and 
novel  that  has  been  cast  upon  any  man  in  the  world's  history. 
I  dread  nothing  but  the  excess  of  that  conservative  element 
which  is  so  ill-suited  to  occasions  like  the  present.  These  are 
times  when  men  cannot  afford  to  doubt,  and  fear  cannot  be 
safely  allowed  a  place  in  public  counsels.  The  aphorism  of 
Junius  is  but  the  translation  of  the  thought  of  a  greater  than 
himself : 

"  'Our  doubts  are  traitors, 

That  make  us  lose  the  good  we  oft  might  win, 
By  fearing  to  attempt/ 

"While  I  would  have  voted,  however,  for  the  repeal  of  the 
supplementary  resolution,  it  was  not  to  that  portion  of  the  act 
providing  the  punishment  of  treason  in  the  ordinary  forums, 
that  I  would  have  looked  for  such  a  remedy  as  the  case  seemed 
to  me  to  demand.  With  every  disposition  to  allow  the  fullest 
effect  to  the  argument  that  looks  in  what  might  be  called  the 
radical  direction,  and  claims  that  the  forfeiture  may  be,  in 
cases  of  attainder  under  the  Constitution,  of  the  whole  estate 
in  lands,  and  with  the  knowledge  that  a  controlling  reason  for 
the  change  in  the  English  law,  which  we  had  copied,  was  to  be 
found  in  the  tendency  of  the  earlier  practice  to  break  up  the 
estates  and  families  of  the  great  nobility  and  accumulate  their 
possessions  in  the  hands  of  the  Crown,  I  could  not  permit  myself 
to  be  beguiled  by  my  wishes  into  the  belief  that  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  intended  anything  but  what  they  have  so 
obviously  said.  Taking  as  my  guide  the  plain  language  of  that 
instrument,  the  state  of  the  law  in  England,  and  of  the  prevail 
ing  public  opinion  there  and  here  at  the  time  of  its  adoption, 
together  with  the  contemporaneous  exposition  which  it  received 
at  the  hands  of  the  men  who  shared  so  largely  in  its  preparation 
and  advocacy,  and  the  construction  given  to  the  disputed  clause 
by  all  the  commentators — without  a  single  exception,  so  far  as 
I  am  advised — I  cannot  bring  myself  to  doubt  at  this  late  day 
as  to  its  meaning  and  purpose,  however  much  they  may  run 
counter  to  my  own  inclinations.  To  yield  to  them,  with  my 
strong  convictions,  would  be  to  involve  me  in  an  act  of  infidelity 
as  well  to  my  profession  as  to  my  legislative  trust,  by  making 
the  wish  and  not  the  judgment  'father  to  the  thought.'  I  must 
take  the  Constitution  as  I  find  it  written,  in  spite  of  the  sup 
posed  absurdity  of  authorizing  a  forfeiture  for  life  in  the  case 


504  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  a  crime  whose  usual  penalty  is  death,  and  where  the  very 
attainder,  which  is  a  legal  and  social  death,  determines  that 
part  of  the  punishment  at  the  very  point  where  it  begins.  If 
ingenious  gentlemen  here  had  adverted  to  the  process  of  out 
lawry,  so  familiar  to  British  jurisprudence  in  precisely  such 
cases,  and  not  entirely  unknown  to  our  own,  or  to  the  possibility 
of  annexing  a  punishment  less  than  that  of  death  to  the  highest 
of  crimes,  they  would  not,  perhaps,  have  considered  the  rednctio 
ad  absurdum  as  quite  so  complete  as  they  seemed  to  think  it. 
If  we  are  to  punish  those  who  flee  from  justice  into  other 
lands  by  judicial  process,  we  shall  have  to  draw  from  the  lumber 
rooms  of  the  profession  the  old  machinery  of  the  exigent.  That 
we  may  come  to  treat  the  highest  of  crimes  as  worthy  only  of 
the  lightest  of  punishments  is  not  improbable  when  we  find  it 
not  only  dealt  with  as  eminently  chivalrous  and  respectable, 
but  absolutely  rewarded,  by  allowing  its  perpetrators  to  vote 
with  the  minority  in  the  organization  of  the  great  council  of  the 
nation  itself,  and  granting  funeral  honors  to  their  families,  with 
out  even  a  rebuke. 

"With  this  reading  of  the  disputed  clause  of  the  Constitu 
tion  reluctantly  conceded,  and  even  under  the  opposite  hypothesis 
— supposing  it  to  be  the  true  one — I  can  see  nothing  practical 
in  the  attainder  by  judicial  process,  and  no  remedy  therein  for 
present  or  prospective  evils,  in  the  infliction  of  punishment  upon 
the  guilty.  The  Constitution  provides  that  'the  trial  of  all  crimes 
except  in  cases  of  impeachment  shall  be  by  jury,  and  such  trial 
shall  be  held  in  the  State  where  the  said  crimes  shall  have  been 
committed;'  and  again,  that  'no  person  shall  be  held  to  answer 
for  a  capital  or  otherwise  infamous  crime  unless  on  a  present 
ment  or  indictment  by  a  grand  jury;'  and  further,  that  'in  all 
criminal  prosecutions  the  offender  shall  enjoy  the  right  to  a 
speedy  and  public  trial  by  an  impartial  jury  of  the  State  and 
district  wherein  the  crime  shall  have  been  committed.'  How, 
then,  are  you  to  try,  how  convict  under  such  limitations  as 
these,  where  your  jurisdiction  is  ousted,  where  you  are  without 
courts,  and  where  the  jury  of  the  vicinage — the  peers  of  the 
delinquent — are  the  very  partners  of  his  guilt?  It  would  be 
the  merest  of  mockeries  to  attempt  it.  If  the  arch-apostate 
himself  were  to  stalk  again  to-morrow  into  the  Senate  Chamber 
of  this  nation,  reasserting  his  rights,  and  reclaiming  his  abdicated 
seat  in  that  body,  you  might  arrest  him,  it  is  true,  but  there  is 
no  jurisdiction  this  side  of  the  Potomac — that  river  of  oblivion 
which  sweeps  around  your  capital  walls — that  could  take 
recognizance  of  his  manifold  crimes.  The  salutary  guards  which 
have  been  borrowed  from  Magna  Charta,  and  thrown  around 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      505 

the  person  of  the  criminal,  were  not  intended  for  a  condition  of 
things  like  the  present.  They  suppose  a  state  of  universal 
peace,  where  the  law  shall  speak  its  potential  voice  in  all  its 
forums,  and  through  all  its  accredited  organs,  and  not  a  condi 
tion  of  things  where  its  oracles  are  silenced,  and  its  priests 
driven  from  their  very  altars.  The  maxims  of  peace  are  not 
suited  to  a  condition  of  war.  It  has  run  into  a  proverb  that  the 
laws  are  silent  amid  the  tumult  of  arms.  Where  the  ordinary 
jurisdiction  has  been  declined,  and  no  common  superior  is  recog 
nized,  the  case  has  passed,  ex  necessitate,  into  a  higher  tribunal 
by  the  election  of  the  recusant  himself,  and  must  be  left  to  the 
arbitrament  which  he  has  chosen,  with  all  the  consequences  of 
a  judgment  there.  It  has  not  passed,  however,  beyond  the 
domain  of  the  Constitution,  as  the  language  of  my  learned  and 
able  colleague  [Mr.  STEVENS]  would  seen  to  import.  The  men 
who  framed  that  instrument  foresaw  the  exigency  with  their 
usual  perspicacity,  and  with  their  usual  wisdom  have  provided 
for  it,  as  I  think,  abundantly.  If  they  have  not,  then  the  late 
Attorney  General  was  right  in  declaring  that  there  was  no  war 
rant  for  waging  this  war  against  the  rebellious  States,  and 
wrong  in  presenting  himself  and  his  party  at  the  recent  elec 
tions  in  Pennsylvania  as  the  advocates  of  its  vigorous  prose 
cution  ;  and  then  there  is  no  authority  for  shooting  down  a 
rebel  on  the  battle-field.  Those  who  insist  that  there  shall 
be  no  punishment  for  the  traitor  except  by  the  process  of  judicial 
attainder,  intend  that  he  shall  not  be  punished  at  all — mean,  if 
they  know  whereof  they  speak,  entire  immunity,  as  well  to  him 
as  to  his  wife  and  children,  for  all  his  crimes. 

"I  make  no  account,  therefore,  of  the  first  four  sections  of 
the  act  of  1862,  which,  by  the  way,  involve  no  forfeiture  except 
of  property  in  slaves.  True,  they  impose  fines  which  may  result 
— as  it  was  no  doubt  intended  they  should  do — in  the  divestiture 
of  the  fee,  but  whether  those  fines  are  in  conflict  or  not  with 
that  provision  of  the  Constitution  which  declares  'that  excessive 
fines  shall  not  be  imposed  or  cruel  and  unusual  punishments 
inflicted,'  I  shall  not  stop  to  inquire,  for  the  reason  already 
suggested,  of  the  utter  impracticability  of  making  that  portion 
of  the  law  effective  in  its  application  to  the  guilty  parties. 

"Upon  the  remaining  sections  of  that  act,  however — always 
excepting  its  expatriation  clause,  whose  wisdom  at  a  time  when 
the  country  so  much  wants  soldiers  for  its  armies  and  laborers 
for  its  fields  is  not  any  more  obvious  to  me  than  that  of  the 
repeal  of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  or  the  expulsion  of  the  Moors 
from  Spain — I  could  have  planted  myself  with  assured  con 
fidence.  I  find  nothing  there  that  looks  to  an  attainder — nothing 


506  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

that  even  touches  the  person — nothing  but  authority  to  seize 
enemies'  property,  and  carry  it  into  court  for  condemnation  by 
a  proceeding  in  rem — against  the  thing  itself — as  lawful  prize 
of  war.  The  question  of  treason  is  practically  adjourned, 
although  not  absolutely  waived  by  the  posture  of  the  belligerents. 
The  framers  of  that  law  have  obviously  looked  to  this  as  the 
alternative,  well  knowing  that,  although  it  is  a  maxim  of  the 
common  law  that  there  is  no  wrong  without  a  remedy,  there 
was  no  remedy  here  if  this  one  failed. 

''And  this  leads  me  back  to  the  question,  What  is  the 
authority  that  the  public  law,  which  is  the  law  of  the  case,  and 
pro  hac  vice  the  law  of  the  Constitution,  gives  us  over  the 
rights  and  property  of  an  enemy?  And  on  this  point  Bynkers- 
hoek,  of  whom  Chancellor  Kent  remarks  in  Griswold  vs.  Wad- 
dington,  (16  Johnston,  438,)  that  he  is  'one  of  the  most  dis 
tinguished  writers  on  public  law,  and  that  his  treatise  on  the 
law  of  war  has  been  more  quoted  and  relied  upon  as  authority 
in  Europe  and  America  than  that  of  any  other  writer,'  says  that 
'if  we  take  for  our  guide  nature,  that  great  teacher  of  the  law 
of  nations,  we  shall  find  that  anything  is  lawful  against  an 
enemy,'  (p.  2;)  and  further,  that  a  nation  that  has  injured 
another  is  considered,  with  everything  that  belongs  to  it,  as 
being  confiscated  to  the  nation  that  receives  the  injury,  (p.  4;) 
and  also  that  'if  we  follow  the  strict  law  of  war,  even  immovables 
may  be  sold  and  their  proceeds  lodged  in  the  public  treasury,  as 
is  done  with  movables,  though  throughout  almost  all  Europe 
immovables  are  only  registered,  that  the  treasury  may  receive 
during  the  war  their  rents  and  profits,  and  at  the  termination  of 
the  war,  the  immovables  themselves  are  by  treaty  restored  to 
their  former  owners.'  The  same  doctrine  is  laid  down  by  Wild- 
man,  (vol.  2,  p.  9;)  and  in  the  case  of  Brown  vs.  The  United 
States,  (8  Cranch,  no,)  the  broad  principle  was  assumed  that 
war  gave  the  sovereign  full  right  to  take  the  property  of  the 
enemy  wherever  found,  and  that  the  mitigations  of  this  rigid 
rule,  which  the  wise  and  humane  policy  of  modern  times 
has  brought  into  practice,  may  more  or  less  affect  the  exercise 
of  the  right,  but  cannot  impair  the  right  itself.  It  has  never 
been  disputed,  however,  that  the  property  of  the  sovereign  may 
be  confiscated,  and  this  on  the  ground  that  public  wars  are  wars 
only  between  sovereigns. 

"And  now  let  us  look  at  the  practice. 

"On  the  2d  of  April,  1599,  the  States  General  issued  an  edict 
with  regard  to  all  kinds  of  property,  wherever  found,  which  is 
in  these  words :  'We  declare  lawful  prize  all  persons  and  goods' 
— the  word  bona  in  the  civil  law  including  every  kind  of  prop- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     507 

erty,  but  chiefly  applicable  to  real  estate — 'situate  or  being  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  King  of  Spain,  wherever  the  same  may 
be  taken/ 

"And  again,  the  States  General,  on  the  I4th  of  July,  1584, 
declared  the  people  of  Bruges  and  Vrye,  who  had  gone  over  to 
the  Spaniards,  to  be  their  enemies,  and  ordered  all  their  goods, 
actions,  and  credits,  public  as  well  as  private,  to  be  confiscated. 
And  afterwards,  when  the  people  of  Venloo  had  also  gone  over 
to  the  Spaniards,  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  by  his  edict  of  July  9, 
1586,  declared  them  guilty  of  the  crime  of  high  treason,  and 
ordered  all  their  goods,  movable  and  immovable,  and  all  their 
actions  and  credits,  to  be  confiscated.  'Nor  must  it  be  believed/ 
says  Bynkershoek,  'that  these  things  were  decreed  concerning 
those  of  Bruges,  Vrye,  and  Venloo,  merely  because  they  were 
not  so  much  enemies,  as  traitors.' 

"It  seems,  then,  that  though  the  strict  law  which  authorizes 
the  seizure  of  everything,  has  been  modified  by  the  usages  of 
nearly  all  Europe,  so  as  to  restore  it  by  treaty  in  the  cases 
cited — which  by  the  way  are  more  than  five  hundred  years  after 
the  Norman  conquest — the  practice  was  otherwise  in  one  of 
the  most  liberal,  enlightened,  and  republican  nations  of  that 
continent,  as  it  certainly  was  during  the  earlier  ages  of  repub 
lican  Rome.  There  is  as  much  difference,  however,  between 
usage  and  law,  as  there  is  between  generosity  and  justice,  in 
dealing  with  the  affairs  of  nations. 

"In  the  conquests  of  ancient  times,  however,  even  individ 
uals  lost  their  lands.  'Nor  is  it  a  matter  of  surprise/  remarks 
Vattel,  'that  in  the  early  ages  of  Rome  such  a  custom  should 
have  prevailed.  The  wars  of  that  era  were  carried  on  between 
popular  republics  and  communities.  The  State  possessed  very 
little,  and  the  quarrel  was  in  reality  the  common  cause  of  all 
the  citizens.  But  at  present  one  sovereign  wars  against  another 
sovereign,  and  not  against  unarmed  citizens.'  (P.  388.) 

"The  gentleman  from  Kentucky  [Mr.  WADSWORTH]  states 
the  rule  which  rests  upon  this  idea,  and  distinguishes  between 
the  sovereign  and  the  subject,  without  reference,  however,  to 
the  question  whether  the  citizen  is  armed  or  not,  as  he  is 
unquestionably  in  the  present  quarrel.  He  does  not  deny,  if  I 
have  correctly  understood  him,  that  the  property  of  the  sovereign 
himself  may  be  lawfully  taken.  In  the  same  speech,  however, 
he  declares,  and  rightly,  too,  that  the  sovereignty  here  is  in  the 
people.  By  his  own  logic,  therefore,  the  property  of  individuals 
may  be  lawfully  taken  in  a  war  between  republican  States, 
which,  as  Vattel  remarks,  is  in  reality  the  common  cause  of  all 
the  citizens. 


508  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"But  we  are  not  yet  done  with  Vattel.    He  says  further : 

"  'But  a  conqueror  who  has  taken  up  arms  not  only  against 
the  sovereign  but  against  the  nation  herself,  and  whose  intention  it 
is  to  subdue  a  fierce  and  savage  people,  and  once  for  all  to  reduce 
an  obstinate  enemy,  may  with  justice  lay  burdens  on  the  conquered 
nation,  both  as  a  compensation  for  the  expenses  of  the  war  and  as 
a  punishment.'  (Ibid.,  389.)  'He  may,  according  to  the  degree 
of  indocility  apparent  in  their  disposition,  govern  them  with  a 
tighter  rein,  so  as  to  curb  and  subdue  their  impetuous  spirit;  he 
may  even,  if  necessary,  keep  them  for  some  time  in  a  kind  of 
slavery.' 

"And  again :  'Although,'  as  he  suggests,  'towns  and  countries 
should  not  be  deprived  by  their  conqueror  of  their  liberties, 
privileges,  and  immunities  on  account  of  his  quarrel  with  their 
sovereign,1  he  adds : 

"  'Nevertheless,  if  the  inhabitants  have  been  personally  guilty 
of  any  crime  against  him,  he  may,  by  way  of  punishment,  deprive 
them  of  their  rights  and  privileges.  This  he  may  also  do  if  the 
inhabitants  have  taken  up  arms  against  him  and  have  thus  directly 
become  his  enemies.  In  that  case  he  owes  them  no  more  than 
what  is  due  from  a  humane  and  equitable  conqueror  to  his  van 
quished  foes.  Should  he  merely  and  simply  incorporate  them  with 
his  former  State,  they  will  have  no  cause  of  complaint.'  (Ibid.,  387.) 

"And  further: 

"  'The  whole  right  of  the  conqueror  is  derived  from  justifiable 
self-defense,  which  comprehends  the  support  and  prosecution  of  his 
rights.  When  therefore  he  has  totally  subdued  a  hostile  nation,  he 
undoubtedly  may  in  the  first  place  do  himself  justice  respecting 
the  object  which  had  given  rise  to  the  war,  and  indemnify  himself 
for  the  expenses  and  dangers  he  has  sustained  by  it.  He  may, 
according  to  the  exigency  of  the  case,  subject  the  nation  to  punish 
ment  by  way  of  example.  He  may  even,  if  prudence  requires, 
render  her  incapable  of  doing  mischief  with  the  same  ease  in  future. 
Some  princes  have  contented  themselves  with  imposing  a  tribute 
on  the  conquered  nation,  others  with  depriving  her  of  some  of 
her  rights — taking  from  her  a  province,  or  erecting  fortresses  to 
keep  her  in  awe.'  (Ibid.,  388.) 

"  'But  if  he  has  to  do  with  a  perfidious,  restless,  and  dangerous 
enemy,  he  may  by  way  of  punishment,  deprive  him  of  some  of  his 
towns  or  provinces,  and  keep  them  to  serve  as  a  barrier  to  his  own 
dominions.  Nothing  is  more  allowable  than  to  weaken  an  enemy 
who  has  rendered  himself  suspected  and  formidable.  The  lawful 
end  of  punishment  is  future  security/  (Ibid.,  384.) 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     509 

"Grotius  remarks,  however,  that  'in  civil  wars,  be  they  great 
or  small,  there  is  no  change  of  property  but  by  the  sentence  of 
a  judge;'  but  the  learned  Barbeyrac,  in  a  note  on  this  passage, 
says  that  the  civilian  Ulpian  distinguishes  between  a  real  war 
and  a  civil  war,  on  the  ground  that  the  former  is  made  between 
those  who  are  enemies,  and  animated  by  the  spirit  of  enemies, 
which  prompts  them  to  endeavor  the  ruin  of  each  other's  States ; 
whereas,  in  a  civil  war,  however  pernicious  it  often  proves  to 
a  State,  both  parties  are  supposed  to  intend  the  preservation  of 
the  State.  The  one  is  only  for  saving  it  in  one  manner,  and  the 
other  in  another.  So  that  they  are  not  enemies,  (inter  quos 
jura  captivitatium  aut  postliniinium,  or  postliminiorum,  fuerunt, 
&c.,)  and  every  person  of  the  two  parties  continues  always  a 
citizen  of  the  State  so  divided. 

"The  result  of  all  these  authorities,  then,  is  that  the  present 
is  not  a  civil  war  only,  but  a  real  war ;  that  by  the  law  of  nature 
and  of  nations  in  such  cases,  the  treatment  of  the  conquered 
depends  on  the  particular  circumstances  of  the  case ;  that  every 
thing  is  lawful;  that  everything  belonging  to  the  offending 
party  is  confiscated;  that  the  practice  of  nations  has  authorized 
the  forfeiture  even  of  the  real  estate  of  individuals;  that  this 
was  more  especially  authorized  in  quarrels  between  republics; 
that  where  the  quarrel  is  not  with  the  sovereign,  but  with  the 
nation,  and  the  intention  is  to  subdue  a  fierce  and  savage  people, 
the  conqueror  may  lay  burdens  on  them,  not  only  by  way  of 
compensation  but  of  punishment;  that  if  they  have  been  person 
ally  guilty  of  any  crime,  and  have  taken  up  arms  against  him,  he 
may  deprive  them  of  their  rights,  and  owes  them  no  more  than 
what  humanity  and  equity  require;  that  he  may  do  himself 
justice  respecting  the  object  which  has  given  rise  to  the  war, 
and  indemnify  himself  for  the  expense  and  damage  he  has 
sustained;  that  he  may  subject  his  enemies  to  punishment;  and 
that  he  may  render  them  incapable  of  further  mischief.  Indem 
nity,  security,  and  punishment,  are  all,  therefore,  means  of  self- 
defense  which  may  be  legitimately  used. 

"And  now  let  us  inquire  whether  the  forfeiture  of  the 
estates  and  property  of  the  traitors — of  those  who  have  been 
actually  in  arms  against  us — whether  they  consist  of  lands  or 
slaves,  is  required  for  these  purposes.  If  it  be,  there  is  an  end 
of  the  question.  I  have  no  desire,  individually,  that  anything 
shall  be  done  for  the  purposes  of  vengeance  only.  lVce  victis'  is 
not  the  maxim  of  a  humane  conqueror.  'Parcere  subjcctis, 
dcbcllare  superbos}  is  the  rule  by  which  I  would  be  governed. 
I  would  not  exclude  the  idea  of  mercy.  I  agree  with  the  great 
poet  of  human  nature,  that 


5IO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"  'It  becomes 

The  throned  monarch  better  than  his  crown; 
And  earthly  power  then  shows  likest  God's, 
When  mercy  seasons  justice.' 

"I  am  not  clear,  however,  as  to  the  wisdom  of  a  proclama 
tion  of  amnesty  in  advance,  as  a  measure  of  pacification,  without 
limits  as  to  time,  and  where  submission  after  conquest,  and  when 
it  is  no  longer  a  virtue  but  a  necessity,  is  to  be  rewarded  with 
the  same  impunity  as  a  voluntary  return  to  duty  before  that 
time.  But  what  is  the  offense,  how  much  have  we  suffered  from 
it,  and  how  is  its  recurrence  to  be  prevented? 

"I  think  I  may  safely  say  that  human  history  presents  no 
parallel  to  this  rebellion.  Since  the  revolt  of  the  rebel  angels 
there  has  been  no  example  of  an  insurrection  so  wanton,  so 
wicked,  so  utterly  causeless,  and  so  indescribably  ferocious  and 
demoniac  as  the  present.  It  was  not  the  case  of  the  oppression 
of  a  Government,  whose  weight  had  borne  heavily  upon  the 
people.  It  was  none  of  a  violation  of  the  fundamental  law. 
The  object  was  not  redress,  like  that  of  our  Revolution,  but 
destruction.  It  was  a  rebellion  against  the  majority  rule  for 
the  purpose  not  of  reforming,  but  of  overthrowing  the  Govern 
ment,  and  erecting  upon  its  ruins  another  of  an  oligarchic  cast, 
whose  corner-stone  was  property  in  man.  It  was  the  product  of 
a  system  which  threw  all  the  lands  of  the  South  into  the  hands 
of  a  few  men.  It  involved  an  act  of  aggravated  treason  against 
a  humane,  paternal,  and  unoffending  Government.  It  has  been 
conducted  with  a  degree  of  inhumanity  that  has  no  example 
except  in  barbarian  wars.  It  has  involved  to  us  an  enormous 
expenditure  of  money  and  of  blood.  Its  suppression  has  become 
impossible  without  removing  the  cause  of  strife,  and  disabling 
our  enemy  by  liberating  his  slaves,  and  arming  them  against 
him.  It  cannot  be  repaired.  There  is  no  reparation  possible 
that  would  be  commensurate  with  the  injury.  Can  you  breathe 
new  life  into  the  bones  that  ornament  the  necks  and  fingers  of 
southern  dames,  or  bleach  unburied,  without  even  the  humble 
privilege  of  a  grave,  on  southern  battle-fields  ?  Can  you  reclothe 
them  with  the  comely  vesture  that  has  been  given  to  the  vultures 
of  the  southern  skies  ?  Who  shall  restore  the  shattered  limb ;  who 
fill  the  vacant  chair  at  the  family  fireside;  who  give  back  the 
husband  and  the  father,  or  dry  the  tears  of  the  widow  and  the 
orphan?  What  trump,  but  that  of  the  dread  archangel,  who 
gathers  the  tribes  of  the  earth  for  the  last  solemn  judgment,  shall 
awaken  the  gallant  dead  who  sleep  in  bloody  garments  in  their 
beds  of  glory,  from  their  deep  repose  ?  Mock  not  the  grief  that 
is  unutterable  by  the  suggestion  of  indemnity  or  reparation. 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     511 

'Give  me  back  my  legions !'  was  the  passionate  exclamation  of 
the  Roman  Augustus,  when  a  swift  messenger  brought  to  him 
the  tidings  of  the  slaughter  of  Varus  and  his  brave  companions 
in  the  forests  of  Germany.  'Give  me  back  my  children !'  is  the 
wailing  cry  that  will  burst  from  the  bosom  of  the  American 
mother,  who  weeps  like  Rachel  for  her  first-born,  by  the  waters 
of  the  Merrimac  and  the  Ohio — or  mock  me  not  with  the  idea 
of  reparation.  There  is  no  reparation  for  it,  as  there  can  be 
no  punishment,  except  in  the  divestiture  of  the  rights,  and  the 
seizure  of  the  estates  of  the  guilty  leaders.  There  is  no  security 
except  in  the  distribution  of  the  latter,  and  the  complete 
exorcism  of  the  hell-born  and  hell-deserving  spirit  that  has 
wrought  all  this  world-wide  ruin. 

"These  things  are  necessary.  Is  there  anything  in  the  law 
of  nature  to  prevent  them?  Gentlemen  object  that  to  seize  the 
inheritance  would  be  to  visit  the  sins  of  the  guilty  upon  the 
innocent.  They  plead  for  the  wife  whose  counsels  have  driven 
the  husband  into  rebellion.  They  weep  crocodile  tears  for  the 
offspring  who  have  been  taught  to  spit  upon  the  flag  of  their 
country,  who  are  without  title  until  the  decease  of  a  parent  who 
may  happen  to  die  intestate,  and  upon  whom  no  law  of  nature, 
but  only  the  law  which  he  has  violated,  would  in  that  case  have 
devolved  the  succession.  The  widow  and  the  children  of  those, 
however,  who  have  fallen  in  the  effort  to  suppress  this  unholy 
rebellion,  have  no  share  in  their  sympathies.  The  chances  of 
war  may  strip  them  of  their  inheritance,  but  that  makes  no 
difference  with  them.  They  take  no  account  of  the  fact  that 
nature  and  Providence  have  alike  decreed  that  the  sins  of  the 
fathers,  and  even  their  misfortunes,  shall  be  visited  upon  their 
children,  and  that  the  law  which  authorizes  the  sale  of  the 
estate  for  the  debts  of  the  former  has  everywhere  affirmed  its 
justice.  The  misfortunes  of  a  northern  man  and  his  death  in 
righteous  battle  at  the  hands  of  a  Southern  assassin,  may  reduce 
his  offspring  to  beggary.  All  this  is  right;  but  to  allow  the 
family  of  the  traitor  who  has  dealt  a  foul  blow  at  the  social 
state,  and  stricken  down  all  the  securities  of  property,  to  suffer, 
is  regarded  as  a  great  injustice.  The  felon-brood  may  run  its 
plowshare  over  the  bones  of  the  loyal  martyr,  while  his  children 
are  perhaps  eating  the  bread  of  charity  in  their  northern  homes, 
and  it  is  all  right,  because  the  former  are  the  salt  of  the  earth, 
and  a  just  punishment  would  only  exasperate  them  into  a  new 
rebellion.  Let  them  rebel.  A  just  poverty  will  render  their 
efforts  harmless,  and,  by  teaching  them  the  value  and  respecta 
bility  of  labor,  make  them  only  wiser  and  better  men.  With 
my  consent  they  shall  never  trample  upon  the  relics  of  a  northern 


512  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

soldier.  I  would  carve  out  inheritances  for  his  children  upon 
the  soil  that  his  sword  has  ransomed,  and  his  blood  baptized 
and  fertilized.  God's  justice  demands  it,  and  the  heart  and 
conscience  of  the  American  people  will  say,  Amen. 

"But  gentlemen  here  insist  that  we  cannot  subdue  the 
revolted  States,  and  ask  triumphantly  where  there  is  an  inde 
pendent  Government  with  ten  millions  of  people,  maintaining 
itself  for  three  years,  that  has  ever  been  conquered?  What  do 
they  mean  by  this  language?  Do  they  intend  that  we  shall  not 
conquer  them  if  they  can  prevent  it?  Why  do  they  insist  on 
exaggerating  the  numbers,  and  prowess,  and  resources  of  the 
enemy,  and  ignoring  the  facts  of  history,  to  show  that  subjuga 
tion  is  impossible?  Do  they  participate  in  the  feeling  which 
they  have  done  so  much  to  inspire,  that  one  of  this  barbarian 
rabble  which  claims  to  belong  to  the  master  race,  and  rejoices 
to  hear  itself  called  a  nation  of  Cavaliers  by  degenerate  spirits 
on  this  floor,  is  equal  to  at  least  six  northern  freemen,  with  all 
the  advantages  of  an  unbounded  credit  and  a  high  civilization? 
W^hen  they  say  here,  and  say  to  the  country,  that  twenty-three 
millions  of  white  men,  with  four  millions  of  blacks — all  battling 
for  liberty,  and  with  these  great  advantages  in  the  struggle — are 
unable  to  subdue  less  than  four  millions  of  their  own  race, 
without  credit  or  resources,  and  with  no  higher  inspiration  than 
slavery,  they  libel  the  people  of  the  North,  by  declaring  in  effect 
that  they  are  not  worthy  to  be  free.  But  what  do  they  propose, 
in  view  of  these  opinions,  supposing  them  to  be  true?  They 
say  that  they  wish  to  preserve  the  Union,  but  that  is  not  to  be 
accomplished  by  fighting  for  it.  They  desire  to  treat  for  its 
restoration.  Their  nostrums  are,  in  the  language  of  a  gentleman 
from  Indiana,  'conciliation  and  concession.'  Well,  the  former 
has  been  tried  under  border  State  counsels.  We  carried  on  the 
war  for  eighteen  months  on  the  principle  of  doing  as  little  harm 
as  possible  to  our  enemy.  They  have  declared,  however,  again 
and  again,  that  they  will  only  treat  on  the  footing  of  their  entire 
independence.  Negotiation  admits  the  fact  of  secession,  if 
not  the  right,  and  involves  only  the  alternatives  of  recognition, 
or  reconstruction  on  such  terms  as  they  may  choose  to  dictate. 
Do  gentlemen  here  propose  to  avoid  dismemberment,  and  pre 
serve  the  Union,  by  going  into  the  confederacy?  Is  this  the 
concession  that  is  to  be  the  peacemaker?  Is  this  the  errand  on 
which  we  are  to  send  ambassadors  to  pass  under  the  Caudine 
yoke?  No.  Gentlemen  here  may  humble  themselves  to  the 
dust,  and  confess  their  unworthiness  in  the  presence  of  this 
superior  race,  but  they  have  mistaken  their  masters,  the  people, 
if  they  suppose  that  they  have  any  idea  of  falling  into  the  bare- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     513 

footed  procession  of  mendicants,  which  is  endeavoring  to  find 
its  way  South,  in  order  to  kiss  the  black  stone  at  the  Mecca  of 
treason,  to  which  they  turn  so  reverentially  in  their  speeches 
here.  The  people  are  high-spirited,  if  their  servants  are  not. 
They  know  that  if  we  have  not  whipped  the  rebels,  it  is  only 
because  we  have  taken  counsel  from  the  men  who  thought  we 
could  not.  They  intend  to  clear  up  this  aspersion  on  their 
manhood,  by  showing  that  they  can  not  only  subjugate  the  rebels 
in  the  South,  but  that  they  can  do  the  same,  if  necessary,  with 
their  sympathizers  in  the  North.  They  have  made  up  their 
minds  to  chastise  the  self-abasing  thought  out  of  those  who  have 
entertained  it,  and  to  preserve  this  Union  at  every  sacrifice,  and 
woe  to  him  who  ventures  to  gainsay  their  decision. 

"But  then  there  is  a  difference  of  blood,  which  renders  con 
quest,  and  would,  by  the  same  logic,  render  a  harmonious 
reunion,  impossible !  Gentlemen  on  the  other  side  insist  upon 
distinguishing,  to  their  own  disadvantage,  between  the  North 
and  South  in  this  particular.  They  tell  us  that  the  latter  are  a 
nation  of  Cavaliers,  while  we  are  only  Puritans,  or  Quakers,  or 
Pennsylvania  Dutch.  Well,  if  it  were  true,  and  they  were  twice 
as  numerous  as  they  are,  there  is  nothing  in  the  facts  of  history 
to  warrant  the  servile  reiteration  here,  of  the  Richmond  vaunt 
that  they  cannot  be  conquered,  and  will  die  in  the  last  ditch,  if 
necessary.  The  little  Island  of  Great  Britain  holds  in  bondage 
the  Celt  of  Ireland  and  the  hundred  millions  of  India,  while  the 
Mantchou  Tartar  dominates  over  three  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  Chinese.  Alexander  left  the  world  as  a  legacy  to 
his  generals,  and  the  Ottoman  still  sits  upon  the  Bosphorus,  and 
sways  his  scepter  over  the  imperial  city  of  the  East.  But  it  is 
not  true.  Gentlemen  on  the  other  side  are  as  much  out,  I  think, 
in  their  ethnology  as  in  their  history.  There  is  no  distinction 
of  blood,  and  none  of  habit  or  opinion,  except  that  which  must 
prevail  between  a  higher  civilization  and  a  lower  one.  If  they 
mean  that  the  men  who  colonized  the  South  were  a  superior 
variety  of  the  same  stock,  they  speak  in  ignorance  of  the  fact 
that  the  New  England  Pilgrims  were  the  very  highest  and 
purest  type  of  the  genuine  Englishman,  abandoning  high  social 
positions  and  comfortable  homes,  in  the  quest  of  liberty  in  the 
New  World,  while  the  colonists  of  the  South  were,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  a  motley  and  miscellaneous  herd  of  mere  adventurers, 
some  flying  from  their  creditors  at  home,  and  others  rejected  by 
the  stomach  of  the  Old  World,  and  vomited  per  force  upon  our 
shores.  If  they  mean  that  they  are  of  the  class  which  believes 
in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  in  the  idea  of  an  exclusive  caste, 
and  that  free  society  is  a  failure,  then  they  are,  perhaps,  right. 


514  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

But  these  opinions  were  not  imported  by  them.  They  are  of 
indigenous  growth.  They  are  the  legitimate  offspring  of  the 
institution  which  turns  man  into  a  chattel,  and  makes  him  the 
property  of  his  fellow.  They  are  the  results  of  a  social  system 
that  ignores  the  idea  of  republican  equality,  and  cannot  possibly 
exist — as  it  never  yet  has  existed — in  any  other  than  an  essen 
tially  aristocratic  State,  which  it  must  necessarily  engender,  if 
it  does  not  find  it  ready-made.  In  this  sense  of  the  word  they 
are  indeed  a  sort  of  bastard  Cavaliers — with  this  difference 
however — that  the  type  of  the  class  was  a  pattern  of  knightly 
faith,  who  honored  and  worshipped  his  God,  his  lady,  and  his 
king;  while  this — the  counterfeit  presentment — is  a  sort  of 
Jonathan  Wild — half  highwayman  and  half  footpad — rejoicing 
in  treason,  murder,  perjury,  and  robbery,  and  signalizing  his 
faith  and  gallantry  by  lynching  Methodist  preachers,  selling  or 
burning  negroes,  or  hunting  them  with  bloodhounds,  and  perse 
cuting  helpless  and  unoffending  Yankee  schoolm'ams.  And  yet 
there  is  not  a  miserable  sandhiller  in  the  Carolinas  who  does  not 
claim,  upon  northern  testimony,  such  as  we  listen  to  here,  a 
lineal  descent  from  the  companions  of  the  Conqueror,  and  strut 
and  swagger  with  an  air  even  more  lordly  than  the  sans-culotte 
Mosquito  king,  or  the  equally  ambitious  and  pretentious  native 
of  the  Gold  Coast,  who,  in  complete  destitution  of  all  nether 
integuments,  buttons  up  his  superior  man,  and  treads  the  deck 
of  a  man  of  war  in  the  regimental  coat  of  a  British  officer. 

"There  is  one  fact  I  admit,  and  it  is  the  only  one  that  does 
seem  to  indicate  an  ethnological  difference,  and  that  is  that  the 
newly  invented  Cavalier,  like  the  Frenchman,  and  the  Spaniard, 
and  the  other  dark-skinned  races  of  southern  Europe,  crosses 
readily  with  the  black  man — as  the  Teuton  rarely  does,  with 
either  the  black  man  or  any  of  the  Celtic  tribes,  whose  politics, 
ignoring  generally  the  individual  man,  know  no  Government 
without  a  king,  as  their  religion  knows  no  Church  without  a 
pope.  The  blood  of  these  two  great  families  of  man,  flowing  side 
by  side  in  parallel  currents  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  in 
France,  has  never  intermingled,  and  the  example  of  the  French 
and  Spanish  settlements  in  Louisiana,  Florida,  and  the  Canadas, 
is  evidence  that  they  do  not  intermingle  here,  but  that  the  Latin 
races,  like  the  Indian,  are  dying  out  under  the  shadow  of  the 
paler  Northman.  I  leave  the  negro,  however,  and  his  place  in 
nature  and  the  social  scale,  to  the  ethnologists,  like  the  gentle 
man  from  Ohio,  only  advising  further  researches  in  this  new 
and  interesting  branch  of  political  science.  I  am  not  personally 
averse  to  these  speculations.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  question 
of  politics  may  not  turn  out  at  last  to  be  no  more  than  a  ques- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     515 

tion  of  ethnology.  Setting  the  darker  races  aside,  I  have  been 
sometimes  tempted  to  think  that  I  could  almost  determine  a  priori 
from  the  physiognomies  around  me  here,  the  political  com 
plexions  of  the  men  to  whom  they  respectively  belonged.  On 
this  hypothesis  I  should  have  put  the  gentleman  from  Ohio  just 
where  I  find  him. 

"I  do  not,  however,  insist  upon  the  fact  just  mentioned  as 
conclusive  upon  the  point  of  consanguinity,  and  am  willing  to 
confess,  if  their  friends  here  will  consider  it  no  disparagement 
to  the  chivalry,  that  we  belong  to  the  same  family.  I  would  not 
underrate  the  stock  either  in  its  courage  or  capabilities.  They 
are  just  as  good  in  that  respect  as  ourselves,  and  no  better.  That 
we  do  not  harmonize  is  only  attributable  to  the  institution  that 
makes  them  fierce  and  proud  and  barbarous,  and  haters  of  every 
thing  that  savors  of  democracy.  Take  that  away,  and  we  shall 
run  together  again  like  two  globules  of  mercury.  Take  that 
away,  and  there  never  was  a  people  more  homogeneous  than 
ourselves,  with  the  exception  of  the  one  disturbing  element,  the 
Celtic  Irishman,  who,  with  high  courage  and  quick  and  generous 
impulses,  if  he  cannot  be  absorbed — or,  if  gentlemen  on  the  other 
side  prefer  the  etymological  hybrid,  miscegenated — will  probably 
be  subdued  into  habits  of  republican  obedience  under  the  instruc 
tion  of  the  Yankee  schoolmaster.  Take  that  away,  and  we  shall 
have  no  one  cause  of  discord  left. 

"Rather,  however,  than  do  this  simple  thing — demanded  as 
well  on  grounds  of  consistency  as  of  security — gentlemen  on 
the  other  side,  who  admire  the  Cavalier  and  dislike  the  Puritan, 
would  prefer  to  treat  with  the  former  at  the  expense  of  the 
latter.  In  the  Cincinnati  convention  of  1856,  a  delegate  from 
Pennsylvania  declared  that  in  case  of  a  separation,  that  State 
would  go  with  the  South.  New  York  was  expected  to  take  the 
same  direction,  and  upon  these  assurances  the  south  went  out. 
The  programme  was  that  the  pestilent  Puritan,  who  would 
think  and  talk  at  all  hazards,  because  he  claimed  it  as  his 
birthright,  must  be  excluded.  There  was  no  place  in  any  plan 
of  reconstruction  for  him.  New  England  was  to  be  left  out  in 
the  cold. 

"Leave  out  New  England  in  the  cold !  Well,  I  am  no 
Yankee.  No  drop  of  my  blood  was  ever  filtered  through  that 
stratum  of  humanity.  I  claim,  however,  to  be  a  man.  I  think 
I  love  liberty  above  all  things.  I  know  that  I  can  respect  and 
admire  courage,  and  constancy,  and  high  thought,  and  heroic 
achievement,  wherever  I  may  find  them.  I  would  not  quarrel 
even  with  an  overstrung  philanthropy.  I  can  always  excuse 
the  errors  that  lean  on  the  side  of  virtue,  and  find  fanaticism 


516  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

much  more  readily  in  that  devil-worship  of  slavery,  that  would 
be  willing  to  sacrifice  not  only  all  New  England  but  even  the 
Union  itself,  upon  its  horrid  altars,  than  in  those  noble  spirits 
whose  sin  is  only  their  excessive  love  for  man.  I  may  speak, 
therefore,  without  prejudice. 

''Leave  out  New  England  in  the  cold !  I  doubt  whether  even 
this  would  chill  her  brave  heart,  or  quiet  its  tumultuous  throb- 
bings  for  humanity.  Though  no  ardent  southern  sun  has 
quickened  her  pulses,  or  kindled  her  blood  into  lava,  no  frigid 
neutrality  has  ever  frozen  her  into  stone,  when  the  interests  of 
liberty  appealed  to  her  for  protection.  She  has  been  ever  faithful 
to  the  memory  of  the  great  idea,  which  brought  her  founders 
across  the  ocean,  as  the  only  colony  that  landed  in  this  newly 
discovered  hemisphere  upon  any  other  errand  than  the  search 
for  gold.  I  cannot  forget  that  it  was  this  proscribed  race  that 
inaugurated  the  Revolution,  by  forging  in  their  capital  the 
thunderbolts  that  smote  the  tyranny  of  England,  and  dyeing 
their  garments  with  its  first  blood  upon  the  commons  of  Lexing 
ton.  Leave  out  New  England  in  the  cold !  You  may  look 
unkindly  upon  her,  but  you  cannot  freeze  her  into  apathy,  any 
more  than  you  can  put  out  the  light  of  her  eyes,  or  arrest  the 
missionary  thoughts  which  she  has  launched  over  a  continent. 
It  was  not  New  England  that  stood  shivering  in  cold  indiffer 
ence  when  the  boom  of  the  first  rebel  gun  in  Charleston  harbor 
thrilled  along  her  rock-bound  coast.  Taking  no  thought  of  cost 
or  consequences,  she  rushed  down  like  an  avalanche  to  avenge 
the  insulted  flag  of  our  fathers,  and  Massachusetts  was  glorified 
by  a  second  baptism  when  the  blood  of  her  sons  dyed  the  paving- 
stones  of  the  city  of  Baltimore.  I  would  it  had  been  my  own 
great  State,  whose  drum-beat  was  the  first  that  waked  an  echo 
in  these  Halls,  which  had  won  the  honor  of  that  sacrifice.  But 
it  was  not  so  ordained.  Leave  out  Massachusetts  in  the  cold ! 
What  matters  it  that  no  tropical  sun  has  fevered  her  northern 
blood  into  the  delirium  of  treason?  I  know  no  trait  of  tender 
ness  more  touching  and  more  human,  than  that  with  which  she 
received  back  to  her  arms  the  bodies  of  her  lifeless  children. 
'Handle  them  tenderly,'  was  the  message  of  her  loyal  Governor. 
Massachusetts  desired  to  look  once  more  upon  the  faces  of  her 
martyred  sons,  'marred  as  they  were  by  traitors.'  She  lifted 
gently  the  sable  pall  that  covered  them.  She  gave  them  a 
soldier's  burial  and  a  soldier's  farewell ;  and  then,  like  David  of 
old  when  he  was  informed  that  the  child  of  his  affections  had 
ceased  to  live,  she  rose  to  her  feet,  dashed  the  tear-drop  from  her 
eye,  and  in  twenty  days  her  iron-clad  battalions  were  crowning 
the  heights,  and  her  guns  frowning  destruction  over  the  streets 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     517 

of  the  rebel  city.  Shut  out  Massachusetts  in  the  cold  !  Yes.  You 
may  blot  her  out  from  the  map  of  the  continent :  you  may  bring 
back  the  glacial  epoch,  when  the  Arctic  ice-drift,  that  has 
deposited  so  many  monuments  on  her  soil,  swept  over  her  buried 
surface — when  the  polar  bear,  perhaps,  paced  the  driving  floes, 
and  the  walrus  frolicked  among  the  tumbling  icebergs — but  you 
cannot  sink  her  deep  enough  to  drown  the  memory  of  Lexington 
and  Concord,  or  bury  the  summit  of  the  tall  column  that  lifts 
its  head  over  the  first  of  our  battle-fields.  'With  her/  in  the 
language  of  her  great  son,  'the  past  at  least  is  secure.'  The 
muse  of  history  has  flung  her  story  upon  the  world's  canvas,  in 
tints  that  will  not  fade,  and  cannot  die. 

"But  while  we  are  told  by  gentlemen  on  the  other  side  that 
we  cannot  conquer  the  South,  we  are  somewhat  inconsistently 
charged,  in  almost  the  same  breath,  with  a  desire  to  protract 
the  war  for  the  purpose  of  perpetuating  our  own  power,  and 
asked  imperiously  how  long  it  is  to  continue,  and  when  and 
how  it  is  to  end.  Allow  me  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
prolongation  of  the  war  is  not  the  means  which  a  rational  man 
would  adopt  to  secure  the  ascendancy  of  the  Republican  party. 
No  administration  in  any  free  country  has  ever  been  strong 
enough  to  stand  up  successfully  in  the  face  of  a  long  and 
expensive  war,  where  results  have  proved  incommensurate  with 
means,  and  enormous  armies  that  wanted  to  fight,  were 
compelled  to  stagnate  in  inglorious  repose.  None  has  been  strong 
enough  to  carry  on  its  shoulders  many  such  generals  as  the 
unready  captain  who  is  the  idol  of  the  Democracy,  or  him 
who  was  just  half  an  hour  too  late  at  Williamsport.  No 
rebellion  was  ever  put  down  by  heroes  of  the  Fabian  type,  or 
instrumentalities  like  the  spade.  No  country  is  rich  enough 
to  hold  such  masses  of  men  inactive  for  indefinite  periods 
of  time,  and  under  the  command  of  generals  who  fortify 
when  they  ought  to  attack,  and  turn  away  whenever  the 
enemy  turns  upon  them.  If  there  is  anything  I  dread  and  deplore, 
it  is  the  tenacity  with  which  such  men  are  retained  after 
repeated  failures.  If  there  is  anything  which  gentlemen  on  the 
opposite  side  desire,  it  is  to  see  this  struggle  protracted  under 
the  auspices  of  just  such  leaders — who  have  invariably  been  their 
especial  favorites — until  the  patience  of  the  country  is  exhausted, 
and  its  credit  entirely  ruined.  I  think  I  understand  them.  They 
want  no  Grants  or  Butlers ;  but  they  know  that  another  McClel- 
lan  will  arm  them  with  the  argument  that  a  Republican  Admin 
istration  is  inadequate  to  the  times.  They  do  not  want  this  war 
to  terminate  until  the  next  presidential  election. 


5l8  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"To  the  question,  however,  how  long  it  is  to  continue,  an  apt 
response  might  readily  be  found  in  the  stormy  exordium  of  the 
Roman  orator  when  he  drove  the  infamous  Catiline  from  the 
hall  of  its  august  Senate:  'How  long,  O  Catiline,  wilt  thou 
abuse  our  patience?  How  long  will  thy  unbridled  audacity 
parade  itself  insultingly  here?'  That,  however,  would  savor 
too  much  of  the  Yankee,  by  answering  one  question  with  another. 
Allow  me  then  to  respond  a  little  more  directly,  that  it  will  con 
tinue  just  so  long  as  the  interrogator  and  his  confederates  here 
and  elsewhere,  shall  continue  successfully  to  embarrass  the 
Government  in  its  prosecution,  and  to  encourage  protracted 
resistance  by  assurances  so  often  repeated  on  this  floor,  and  so 
eagerly  caught  up  and  reiterated  by  the  rebel  presses,  that  we 
cannot  conquer  the  insurgents.  The  last  hope  of  the  rebels  is 
confessedly  in  the  success  of  their  sympathizers  here. 

"But  these  gentlemen,  the  neutrals  of  the  border  and  the 
conservatives  of  the  North — Arcadians  all — have,  I  think,  about 
performed  their  mission.  They  have  done,  not  the  work  they 
intended,  but  the  one  they  have  been  put  upon  by  the  great  Ruler 
of  nations.  It  was  a  bloody  work,  but  it  was,  perhaps,  a  neces 
sary  one.  A  blow  struck  at  the  heart  of  the  rebellion  at  its 
outset,  in  the  spirit  of  the  proclamation  of  Fremont,  would 
probably  have  made  an  end  of  it  for  the  time  being,  while  it 
preserved  its  cause.  The  conservative  statesmen  were  wanted 
to  make  the  remedy  radical  and  sure,  by  prolonging  and  exasper 
ating  the  strife,  and  intensifying  and  universalizing  the  very 
narrow  abolition  feeling  of  the  North.  It  was  the  voice  of 
Jehovah  that  spake  from  the  iron  throats  of  those  engines  that 
hurled  their  defiant  missiles  against  our  flag  at  Sumter,  just  as 
the  same  voice  thundered  from  the  clouds  and  darkness  of 
Sinai,  when  it  promulgated  to  the  world  the  great  law  of 
humanity.  It  was  the  great  proclamation  of  freedom  to  the 
oppressed — anteceding  that  of  the  President  by  nearly  two  years 
— that  pealed  in  the  ears  of  the  lordly  chivalry  who  held  high 
carnival  on  that  memorable  day  on  the  boulevards  of  Charles 
ton.  The  light  that  blazed  from  the  muzzles  of  those  guns 
flashed  over  the  American  firmament  with  a  radiance  like  that 
which  flooded  chaos,  at  the  fiat  of  Omnipotence,  on  the  first 
morning  of  creation.  Thinking  people  saw  it  and  rejoiced.  It 
was  'the  beginning  of  the  end'  of  the  long  agony  under  which 
the  nation  had  been  sweating,  as  it  were,  great  drops  of  blood. 
The  war  had  become  a  necessity,  which  politicians  were  power 
less  either  to  postpone  or  avert.  Though  no  abolitionist — till 
then — I  saw  it  and  rejoiced  along  with  them.  I  thanked  Cod 
as  I  do  now — that  by  an  act  of  sublime  justice,  such  as  the  pen 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     519 

of  inspiration  had  never  recorded,  and  the  genius  of  the  drama 
never  imagined,  He  had  put  out  the  eyes  of  the  slave-owner  and 
guided  his  own  hands  to  the  pillars  of  the  temple  which  protected 
him;  that  He  had  made  him  drunk  with  arrogance,  and  decreed 
a  transcendent  suicide,  by  making  himself  the  Nemesis — the 
instrument  of  the  great  work,  which  no  merely  human  agencies 
could  have  accomplished.  But  that  work  would  have  been 
imperfect  without  more;  and,  by  an  act  of  justice  equally  sub 
lime,  He  called  into  counsel  the  statesmen  of  the  border,  along 
with  the  advocates  of  human  bondage  in  the  North,  and  neu 
trality  and  conservatism  stood  hand  in  hand  by  the  bedside  of 
the  sufferer,  helping  it  into  eternity,  and  mistaking  all  the 
while — like  the  lachrymose  and  lugubrious  gentleman  from 
Indiana — in  the  sepulchral  gloom  of  that  chamber  of  mortality, 
the  unburied  and  offensive  corpse  over  which  they  still  sob,  for 
the  image  of  a  dead  or  dying  Union.  If  the  border  States — if 
Kentucky  especially  has  suffered,  as  she  is  claimed  to  have  done 
— if  her  dwellings  have  been  desolated  and  her  soil  drenched 
with  the  blood  of  her  people — she  has  to  thank  her  statesmen, 
as  we  of  the  free  States  do,  for  all  the  sacrifices  it  has  cost  us  to 
save  the  negro,  while  we  were  throwing  away  the  priceless 
jewels  of  the  North.  If,  instead  of  a  neutrality  which  was  only 
another  name  for  treason — which  the  law  of  Solon  would  have 
denounced  as  the  worst  of  crimes,  and  the  fierce  genius  of 
Dante  would  have  gibbeted  in  immortal  and  withering  verse — if, 
instead  of  denying  to  the  General  Government,  and  even  to  her 
own  citizens,  the  privilege  of  organizing  troops  upon  her  soil, 
she  had  but  opened  her  arms  to  a  deliverer,  a  hundred  thousand 
Northern  bayonets  would  have  belted  her  round  as  with  a  wall  of 
fire,  and  no  hostile  foot  would  ever  have  left  a  mark  upon  her 
soil.  She  chose  the  other  part.  Neutrality  flushed  slowly  into 
the  sickly  and  livid  hue,  the  pale,  disastrous  twilight  of  con 
servatism,  and  sat  upon  her  chest  and  ours  until  its  pulses  were 
almost  hushed ;  and,  as  a  consequence  of  all  this,  the  bravest  of 
her  sons  have  died  ignobly  in  the  effort  to  destroy  the  Union  of 
their  fathers,  and  the  most  honored  of  her  names  have  gone 
down  in  darkness  among  the  nameless  and  undistinguished  dead, 
and  found,  and  now  sleep  in  felons'  graves,  unknelled,  uncoffined 
— 'unwept,  unhonored  and  unsung.' 

"But  what  is  to  be  the  end?  Who  doubts  it  that  trusts  in 
Providence  and  knows  that  God  is  just?  In  the  darkest  hour  of 
our  trial,  when  the  gallant  bark  that  bears  our  fortunes  had 
disappeared  among  the  mountain  billows  that  threatened  to 
ingulf  it,  and  the  lowering  clouds  shrouded  in  temporary  dark 
ness  the  glorious  constellation  of  our  fathers — when  all  mon- 


52O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

archical  Europe  clapped  its  hands,  and  sang  peans  of  joy  as  the 
great  Republic  reeled  and  staggered  under  the  felon  blows  that 
were  so  treacherously  aimed  at  her  life  by  the  hands  of  her  own 
unnatural  children — I,  for  one,  never  doubted  or  faltered.  I 
knew  that  its  timbers  might  be  strained,  and  its  prow  dip  deeply 
in  the  trough  of  the  sea,  but  I  read  'resurgam*  on  its  keel.  I 
had  a  faith  that  it  must  come  up  again,  with  the  old  flag — that 
God-blessed  banner  of  our  fathers — type  of  regenerated  humanity 
— symbol  of  hope  to  the  nations — still  flying  at  its  peak — its  only 
stain  washed  out — like  the  star  that  guided  the  magi  over  the 
plains  of  Bethlehem,  to  light  the  oppressed  of  the  Old  World 
to  a  knowledge  of  their  rights  and  capabilities.  If  it  might  be 
permitted  to  the  great  captain,  who  conquered  the  liberties  of 
Rome,  to  say  to  the  trembling  pilot,  'Why  fear  you?  You  carry 
Caesar/  how  much  more  may  we — with  such  a  freight  as  no 
vessel  ever  bore  since  the  ark  of  the  patriarch  rocked  upon  the 
heaving  tides  of  the  deluge,  or  grounded  upon  the  lofty  summits 
of  Arrarat — say  to  the  trembling  cowards  who  despair  of  the 
Republic,  and  even  yet  sit  down  and  wring  their  hands  like 
women  over  the  impossibility  of  saving  it,  *O  ye  of  little  faith ! 
Up,  if  ye  are  men !  A  world's  hopes  are  staked  upon  your  man 
hood  !'  Yes,  there  is  no  throb  of  this  great  heart  that  does  not 
pulsate  through  the  nations,  as  they  stand  at  gaze,  looking  with 
suspended  breath,  upon  the  swaying  fortunes  of  this  Titanic 
struggle.  It  is  the  great  battle  of  the  ages.  It  is  universal  human 
ity  in  its  last  death-wrestle  with  the  powers  of  depotism.  It  is 
a  narrow  view  of  this  controversy  to  suppose  it  a  question  of 
freedom  to  the  negro  only.  The  chain  that  binds  four  millions 
of  black  men,  and  as  many  white,  both  North  and  South,  reaches 
not  only  to  far-distant  Africa,  but  grasps  in  its  iron  links  the 
men  of  all  climes  and  complexions,  from  the  green  island  that 
hangs  at  the  belt  of  Britain,  to  the  gorges  of  the  snow  Caucasus 
— from  the  Hindoo  who  bathes  in  the  Ganges,  to  the  Kalmuck 
who  pastures  his  flocks  upon  the  steppes  of  Tartary. 

"I  trust  we  shall  not  either  ignore  or  underrate  our  mission. 
We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  new  experiment  upon  the  grandest 
theater  that  the  world  ever  saw.  God  has  so  fashioned  this 
country  as  to  make  it  an  indissoluble  unit.  What  He  has  so  joined 
together,  all  the  powers  of  the  earth  and  hell  cannot  rend 
asunder.  The  man  who  would  consent  to  divide  it  upon  any 
terms,  is  like  the  false  mother  who  was  willing  to  take  the 
mutilated  half  of  the  child.  The  individual  who  would  treat 
for  its  severance,  or  even  send  an  embassy  to  those  who  insist 
that  nothing  short  of  this  will  satisfy  them — if  an  American — is 
a  man  I  cannot  comprehend.  I  do  not  claim  any  more  natural 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     521 

sensibility  than  other  men,  but  when  the  dome  of  this  Capitol 
first  rose  before  me  in  the  spring-time  of  life,  I  looked  upon  it 
with  a  feeling  to  which  no  words  of  mine  could  give  expression. 
It  was  not  the  colossal  pile  of  masonry — it  was  not  the  Doric 
column — or  the  storied  architrave — or  the  frescoed  wall — or  the 
tessellated  floor — or  any  of  the  wonders  of  Grecian  or  Italian 
art,  which  the  last  few  years  have  so  multiplied  around  us.  It 
was  the  great  thought  of  the  Union,  embodied — it  was  the  great 
fact  of  the  Union,  idealized  in  stone;  it  was  the  starry  ensign 
that  fluttered  over  these  Halls  where  the  nation's  Representa 
tives  were  assembled ;  it  was  the  reflection  that  there — under  that 
banner — in  these  seats — and  hanging  in  these  galleries — were 
congregated  the  representative  men  of  half  a  continent — from 
the  icy  lakes  of  the  North  to  the  orange  groves  of  Louisiana — 
from  the  men  who  hunted  the  moose  on  the  hills  of  the  Aroos- 
took,  to  those  who  chased  the  buffalo  over  the  great  prairies  of 
the  West — men  who  never  met  elsewhere,  but  were  here  com 
mingled  in  common  brotherhood,  in  devotion  to  the  one  great 
idea,  for  the  development  of  which  this  vast  continent  seems 
to  have  been  specially  reserved.  Away  with  the  jargon  of  art 
in  such  a  presence  as  this !  Blood,  pulse,  and  heart  confessed 
the  power  of  that  overmastering  thought.  It  was  a  part  of  the 
education  of  the  boy;  and  as  I  come  back  now,  in  the 
maturity  of  years,  to  take  my  seat  in  these  Halls — enlarged  and 
beautified  as  they  have  been — as  one  of  the  Representatives  of 
a  domain  which  dwarfs  the  empire  of  the  Macedonian;  to 
realize  that  yonder  imperial  bird,  which  stoops  over  your  head 
— the  sea-eagle  of  the  Vikings — a  little  rapacious  perhaps  at 
times — has  swept  within  almost  a  generation — with  a  pinion 
stronger  than  that  of  the  eagle  of  the  Caesars — over  a  region 
almost  as  wide  as  any  that  ever  owned  their  sway,  while  the  estab 
lishments  of  the  Old  World  have  paled  with  affright  at  the  rush 
of  its  mighty  plumes — blood,  pulse,  and  heart  still  recognize 
the  sublime  idea  that  was  responded  to  by  the  bounding  pulse 
of  boyhood.  God  of  our  fathers !  what  an  inheritance  for 
humanity,  and  what  a  theater  for  the  sublimest  of  its  develop 
ments;  and  what  a  trust  too  for  us  who  have  been  summoned 
here  in  the  hour  of  the  nation's  agony,  to  witness  the  new  birth 
that  is  to  be  the  resurrection  to  a  new  and  better  life!  And 
who  is  the  degenerate  American  in  this  great  assemblage  that 
would  even  hold  counsel  with  those  that  would  imagine  its 
dismemberment?  Who  is  it  that,  in  view  of  the  past  fate  of  all 
who  have  faltered  in  the  hour  of  the  nation's  trial,  and  of  the 
resistless  current  that  is  now  drifting  the  feeble  and  the  faint 
hearted  into  oblivion,  will  be  foolhardy  enough  to  attempt  to 


522  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

stem  that  avalanche  of  opinion  which  has  just  swept  down  from 
the  White  Mountains  of  New  Hampshire,  and  will  strew  all  the 
other  States  with  monuments  of  the  public  wrath  in  the  wreck 
that  it  is  making  of  the  anti-war  party  of  the  North?  Thank 
God!  the  dark  hour  has  passed.  The  skirts  of  this  mighty 
storm  are  drawing  off.  The  fields  that  have  been  watered  by 
its  bloody  shower  will  soon  be  green  again.  We  shall  come  out 
of  this  war  with  a  development  of  muscle  and  manhood,  that 
will  shame  our  former  degeneracy  and  make  the  world  tremble 
at  our  power.  We  shall  have  passed  the  ordeal  that  was  to  try  us 
as  a  nation,  when  we  shall  have  walked  the  burning  plowshare 
of  revolution — as  we  shall  walk  it — with  our  garments  unsinged, 
and  demonstrated — as  we  shall  demonstrate — under  trials  that 
would  have  shaken  down  the  proudest  monarchies  of  Europe, 
the  intelligent,  affectionate,  and  unwavering  loyalty  of  a  self- 
governing  people,  and  the  sublime  energy  and  indestructible 
vitality  of  the  republican  idea.  Our  Government  will  be  no 
longer  an  experiment,  but  a  fact  of  history ;  and  we  shall  resume 
our  no  longer  questionable  rank  among  the  great  Powers  of 
the  earth,  as  first  among  our  peers — the  great  Republic  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere,  one  and  indivisible. 

About  a  month  before  Congress  adjourned  on  July 
4th,  namely,  on  June  2d  (1864),  Justice  Robert  C.  Grier, 
his  long-time  friend,  wrote  him  that  he  had  received  his 
speech. 

"And  what  is  very  unusual  with  me,"  he  continued,  "/  read 
it — While  it  confirmed  my  high  opinion  of  your  talents,  it  failed 
to  convince  my  judgment — either  as  to  the  policy  of  dividing 
the  bear's  skin,  or  quarreling  about  it  before  the  bear  is  killed. 
My  opinion  is  he  ought  to  be  killed  &  my  prayer  is  that  he  may 
be  killed.  But  I  fear  much  that  these  discussions,  as  to  the  divi 
sion  of  his  skin,  will  tend  only  to  make  the  killing  of  him  more 
difficult  or  possibly  render  it  impossible. — Your  speech  as  written 
is  the  best  of  the  season  or  that  has  ever  been  made  on  the  subject 
with  a  spice  perhaps  too  much  of  spread  eagleism.  I  would 
concur  with  most  of  the  propositions  and  views  so  ably  & 
eloquently  stated.  The  heathen  made  slaves  of  the  conquered 
people,  as  better  than  killing  them.  But  Christians  do  not  arro 
gate  the  sovereign  power  of  the  Almighty,  to  'visit  the  sins  of 
the  fathers  on  the  children  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation.' 
I  consider  neither  Romans  nor  Jews  so  very  fit  examples.  David 
might  be  quoted  for  saws.  Our  constitution  was  made  in  a 
different  spirit  &  with  more  enlarged  views — and  without 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     523 

giving  an  opinion  on  what  may  become  a  judicial  question,  I 
think  it  may  well  be  doubted,  whether  you  will  find  a  court 
sworn  to  obey  that  constitution  as  the  higher  law,  who  will 
carry  out  the  wrathful  views  of  angry  politicians.  You  have 
made  the  best  argument  which  could  be  made  in  support  of 
Stevens'  motion — better  than  he  even  made  himself — Tho'  a  man 
of  great  ability  I  think  him  a  dangerous  leader  in  these  most 
difficult  times  &  new  &  difficult  questions.  He  has  ability,  but 
is  reckless  and  injudicious — a  good  lawyer,  but  with  only 
sufficient  conscience  &  subtilty  to  be  a  party  politician,  without 
the  expanded  views  of  a  statesman  or  the  moral  instincts  of  a 
Christian.1 — The  times  call  for  the  cool,  candid  wisdom  of  states 
men,  not  the  revengeful  passions  which  a  demagogue  may 
excite  for  a  temporary  popularity  with  factious  extremists. 
Every  day  changes  the  standpoint  from  which  all  these  difficult 
questions  must  be  viewed — and  a  wise  decision  of  them  can 
only  be  made  when  the  evidence  in  the  case  is  closed  &  both 
parties  heard. — I  would  desire  to  see  you  exercise  your  acknowl 
edged  talents  in  a  way  beneficial  to  the  country,  and  not  follow 
ing  en  suite  of  any  leader  of  faction. — The  liberty  I  take,  in  this 
matter,  of  talking  to  you  plainly  is  the  best  evidence  of  my 
high  appreciation  of  your  good  sense  &  that  you  will  take  no 
offense  from  my  remarks. 

"Very  respectfully  &  truly  yours,  &c. 

"R.    C.    GRIER."2 

While  Mr.  Williams  was  by  no  means  following  any 
party  or  party  leader,  and  did  not  follow  Stevens,  as 
Judge  Thayer  has  intimated,  but  was  voicing  his  own 
matured  sentiments,  as  a  legislator  who  faces  responsibil 
ity  of  action,  instead  of  as  the  quiet  critic  of  action  by 
others,  the  sentiments  expressed  by  Justice  Grier  repre 
sent  a  certain  kind  of  public  feeling  which  it  is  well  to 
have  expressed  by  so  able  a  pen  at  this  point.  Whether 
this  letter  influenced  the  course  of  Mr.  Williams  during 
the  next  session,  which  closed  with  the  second  inaugura 
tion  of  President  Lincoln  and  Vice-President  Andrew 


1  Of  course,  Justice  Grier  is  speaking  of  him  politically. 

-  Letter  among  the  Williams  papers.  Simon  Cameron  wrote  Mr.  Wil 
liams  on  June  36  (1864),  that  "the  National  Com.  should  make  it  a  cam 
paign  document."  Williams  papers.  Charles  Sumner  said  of  it  to  General 
Morehead  that  "there  was  more  law,  more  logic,  more  learning,  more  classic 
iastc  and  elegance,  and  more  statesmanship  by  far"  in  it  "than  in  any  other  that 
had  been  delivered  in  Congress."  Conversation  reported  in  a  letter  of  June 
12,  1864,  among  the  Williams  papers. 

A  bust  of  Mr.  Williams  was  made  by  Clarke  Mills  at  the  latter's  request  at 
this  time. 


524  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Johnson — the  first  that  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  upon  the 
dome  ever  witnessed1 — cannot  be  known.  The  victories 
of  '64-65  and  the  shortness  of  the  session,  which  closed  on 
March  3d,  for  some  reason  led  him  to  confine  himself 
largely  to  the  work  of  the  judiciary  committee  during 
the  rest  of  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress — a  Congress  ever 
famous  as  the  one  in  whose  existence  emancipation  be 
came  a  law  and  the  greatest  rebellion  in  history  was 
brought  all  but  to  an  end.2 

Scarcely  forty  days  had  passed,  when  in  the  midst  of 
rejoicing  over  the  end  at  Appomattox  five  days  before — 
but  a  little  over  four  years  from  the  day  at  Philadelphia 
when  he  said  that  rather  than  surrender  a  great  principle 
he  would  be  assassinated — the  great  President  fell,  on 
the  night  of  April  I4th,  in  the  manner  intimated  in  the 
Independence  Hall  address,  but  he  had  upheld  all  the 
principles  of  both  the  Declaration  and  the  Constitution. 
The  nation  from  end  to  end  was  torn,  in  their  rejoicings, 
with  mingled  feelings  of  grief  and  hot  indignation  which 
had  much  to  do  with  the  course  of  the  next  Congress. 
At  Pittsburgh  a  public  meeting  was  arranged,  as  was 
done  in  nearly  all  other  places  in  the  Union,  for  a  funeral 
address,  and  by  common  consent  Mr.  Williams  was 
acknowledged  to  be  the  fitting  orator  for  the  occasion. 
The  people  assembled  at  Christ  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  in  Penn  Street,  on  Thursday,  June  ist,  and  he 
again  delivered  a  eulogy  over  a  second  President  to  fall 
before  the  echoes  of  his  inaugural  were  scarcely  silent 
over  the  land.3 

"We  meet  in  gloom,"  he  began.  "But  yesterday  our  streets 
were  jubilant,  and  the  very  heavens  ablaze  with  the  bright  pomp 
of  a  rejoicing  multitude.  But  yesterday  our  temples  were  vocal 
with  songs  of  rapturous  thanksgiving  for  the  great  victories  that 

1  Speaker  Colfax's  closing  address,   Congressional  Globe,   Thirty-eighth   Con 
gress,   2d   Session,   Part  2,  p.    1424.     The  statue  was  finally  placed    in    position 
December  2,   1863.     It  is  a  curious  fact  that  it  would  have  been  crowned  by  a 
Liberty  cap,  instead  of  eagle's  feathers,  had  not  Jefferson  Davis,   Secretary  of 
War,  when  the  point  came  up,  objected  that  it  might  look  as  if  this  image  of 
Americans  might  once  have  been  enslaved.     Todd's    "Story    of    the     City    of 
Washington,"  p.  207.     It  may  be  recalled,  also,  that  it  was  only  in  1857  that  the 
House    of    Representatives    left    their     old-time     home,     the     present     Hall     of 
Statuary,  for  the  one  they  have  since  occupied. 

2  In  a  letter  of  March  13,  1865,  Mr.  Williams  tells  of  a  trip  to  the  front  and 
pleasant  experiences  as  a  guest  of  Generals  Grant  and  Meade. 

a  Copies   among   the   Williams   papers. 


PRESIDENT  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

Halftone  of  a  contemporary  photograph  by  Brady,  negative  in  possession  ot 
L,.  C.  Handy,  Washington,  D.  C. 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      525 

had  been  vouchsafed  to  our  arms.  To-day  no  jubilee  solicits  us. 
No  loud  huzzas — no  'aves  vehement' — no  hurrying  feet — no 
hymns  of  triumph  salute  our  ears.  It  is  the  hour  of  darkness,  as 
these  sad  emblems  indicate.  A  nation  mourns.  A  mighty  people 
throngs  its  wide-spread  sanctuaries,  to  lament  its  martyred 
Chief,  but  just  returned  from  the  overthrow  of  the  armed  array 
that  menaced  its  own  life,  to  die  in  the  very  hour  of  his  triumph 
— in  the  fancied  security  of  its  own  capital — under  the  blaze  of 
a  thousand  lights,  and  a  thousand  admiring  eyes — and  in  the 
midst  of  the  brave  hearts  that  belted  him  around,  and  would  have 
spilled  their  life's  best  blood  to  shelter  him  from  harm — and  to 
die,  oh  God  of  Justice !  by  the  stealthy  and  felonious  blow  of  an 
assassin.  In  such  a  presence,  and  with  such  surroundings,  the 
chosen  Ruler  of  this  great  Republic — the  kind,  the  generous, 
the  parental  magistrate,  who  knew  no  resentments,  and  had 
never  done  aught  to  deserve  an  enemy — has  bowed  his  venerable 
head  upon  his  bosom,  and  laid  down  the  high  commission  with 
which  he  had  been  so  lately  reinvested  by  the  popular  acclaim. 
'Most  sacrilegious  murder  hath  broke  ope  the  temple  of  the 
Lord's  anointed,  and  stolen  out  the  life  of  the  building.'  The 
pulse  of  the  world  has  stood  almost  suspended  by  the  earthquake 
jar  that  shook  its  continents  and  isles,  as  no  event  of  modern 
times  has  done.  A  multitudinous  people — 'in  numbers  number 
less'  almost  as  the  stars  of  heaven — thrilled  with  horror,  and 
smitten  dumb  by  the  fearful  atrocity  which  flashed  upon  them, 
unheralded  by  any  note  of  warning,  over  the  electric  wires,  have 
uncovered  their  heads  and  wept,  as  no  people  ever  wept  before, 
as  the  funeral  cortege  swept  by,  with  its  precious  but  uncon 
scious  burthen,  over  mountain  and  plain,  and  along  the  rivers 
and  the  lakes,  in  its  long  and  melancholy  journey  to  the  far 
Western  home  which  he  was  to  see  in  the  body  no  more.  The 
earth  has  opened  to  receive  all  that  the  nation  could  give  back 
to  that  now  desolated  home,  and  we  are  here  to-day,  by  the 
appointment  of  his  successor,  to  bow  in  reverential  submission 
and  acknowledgment  before  the  Hand  that  has  smitten  us,  and 
to  draw  such  consolations  as  are  possible,  from  the  consideration 
that  the  chastisements  of  God  are  sometimes  mercies  in  disguise, 
while  we  water  with  our  tears  the  fresh  grave  of  the  heroic 
martyr,  who  has  crowned  his  great  work  by  the  offering  of  his 
own  life  upon  the  same  altar  where  the  blood  of  so  many  victims 
had  already  smoked  to  heaven. 

"Yes !  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  is  no  more.  All  that  could  die 
of  him  who  has  defended  and  rebuilt  the  tottering  structure  of 
our  fathers,  has  passed  from  earthly  view,  by  a  transition  as 
abrupt  as  his  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  Eternal  City,  and 


526  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

then,  according  to  the  legendary  epic  of  the  Roman  State,  was 
wrapt  from  mortal  vision  in  a  chariot  of  fire.  The  shadow  of 
the  destroyer  has  mounted  behind  the  trooper,  and  the  grim 
spectre  of  the  grisly  king  followed  close  upon  the  pageant  of  the 
avenue.  The  wise  and  prudent  ruler  who  was  commissioned  of 
God  to  lead  this  people  through  the  fiery  trials  from  which  they 
have  just  emerged — the  chief  who  had  just  been  lifted  on  their 
bucklers  for  a  second  time  to  the  supreme  command — the  idol  of 
the  popular  heart,  who  had  so  recently  been  crowned  anew  at 
the  Capitol  with  the  symbols  of  a  nation's  power,  the  insignia  of 
a  nation's  trust,  and  the  rewards  of  a  nation's  gratitude,  amidst 
the  thundering  salvos  of  artillery,  and  the  responsive  voices  of 
an  innumerable  throng,  has  ceased  to  listen  to  the  applauding 
shout,  and  passed  from  the  regards  of  men,  into  the  serener 
light  of  an  abode  beyond  the  stars,  where  the  banner  of  war  is 
furled,  and  the  hoarse  summons  of  the  trumpet,  and  the  roll  of 
the  stirring  drum,  no  longer  awaken  either  to  the  battle  or  the 
triumph. 

"On  two  occasions  only  in  our  brief  but  eventful  history,  the 
hand  of  death  has  fallen  upon  the  head  of  this  great  Republic. 
On  both,  however,  it  descended  in  a  period  of  public  tranquility, 
by  the  quiet  and  gentle  ministration  of  nature,  without  shock 
and  without  disturbance.  The  fruit  fell  when  it  was  ripe,  and 
the  nation  grieved,  but  not  as  those  who  are  without  hope.  It 
paused  but  for  a  moment  to  cast  its  tribute  of  affection  on  the 
tomb,  and  then  hurried  onward  in  its  high  and  prosperous 
career.  For  the  first  time  now,  in  the  very  hurricane  of  civil 
strife,  a  bloody  tragedy,  of  fearful  aspect,  and  more  than 
mediaeval  horror,  forestalling  the  dissolving  processes  that  are 
interwoven  with  the  law  of  life,  has  snatched  away  the  man  who, 
above  all  others,  was  most  dear  to  us,  almost  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye,  in  high  health,  and  in  the  very  crisis  of  his  great 
work,  when  the  regards  of  the  world  were  most  intently  fixed 
upon  him,  and  the  destinies  of  a  nation  were  trembling  in  his 
hands.  It  is  as  though  an  apparation  had  stalked,  in  the  midst 
of  our  rejoicings,  into  the  very  presence  of  the  festal  board, 
and  it  is  under  the  projecting  shadow  with  which  that  ghastly 
shape  has  darkened  the  whole  land  as  with  a  general  eclipse, 
that  I  am  asked  to  discourse  to  you  of  the  merits  and  services 
of  the  extraordinary  man,  who  has  thus  disappeared  from 
amongst  us  after  having  enacted  so  large  a  part  in  the  greatest 
and  most  important  era  of  the  world's  history.  It  is  a  task 
which  is  never  easy  in  the  performance,  and  cannot  be  faithfully 
executed  until  the  lapse  of  years  shall  withdraw  the  observer 
from  a  proximity  that  is  always  unfavorable  to  the  clearest 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     527 

vision,  and  the  work  is  consigned  to  the  pen  of  impartial  his 
tory.  It  is  one,  however,  which  I  have  not  felt  at  liberty  to 
decline. 

"Of  Abraham  Lincoln  there  is  little  to  be  said,  until  the  voice 
of  the  people  called  him  from  the  comparative  obscurity  of  a 
provincial  town  in  the  remote  West,  to  preside  over  the 
destinies  of  this  Republic.  The  story  of  his  life,  antecedent  to 
his  appearance  on  that  broader  stage,  where  he  was  destined  to 
command  more  of  the  observation  of  the  world  than  any  other 
man  either  of  ancient  or  modern  times,  is  soon  told.  Born  in 
a  frontier  settlement  in  Kentucky,  of  humble  parentage,  and 
with  no  prospective  inheritance  but  that  of  the  coarsest  toil,  it 
was  not  his  hard  fate  to  wear  out  his  life  in  the  hopeless  struggle 
for  success,  to  which  that  nativity  would  have  consigned  him. 
At  the  age  of  six  years,  his  parents,  warned  by  no  vision,  but 
by  the  stern  necessities  of  life,  removed  from  the  house  of 
bondage,  taking  the  young  child  with  them,  to  grow  up  in  the 
freer  air  of  that  great  Territory,  whose  fundamental  ordinance 
had  insured  the  respectability  of  labor,  by  forbidding  any 
bondsman  from  ever  setting  his  foot  upon  its  soil.  There,  in  the 
vigorous  young  State  of  Indiana,  without  even  the  aid  of  a 
mother's  care  beyond  his  infant  years,  he  shot  up — we  know 
not  how — into  the  lofty  stature  and  robust  manhood  which  have 
since  become  so  familiar  to  us  all,  diversifying  his  labors,  and 
indulging  that  spirit  of  adventure  that  is  so  common  to  the 
pioneer,  by  embarking,  at  the  age  of  nineteen  years,  as  a  work 
ing  hand,  at  the  scanty  wages  of  ten  dollars  a  month,  on  one  of 
those  primitive  flat-boats  on  which  the  western  farmer  of  those 
times  was  wont  to  launch  his  produce  on  the  bosom  of  the  Ohio, 
to  find  its  only  market  at  New  Orleans.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
one  years,  without  any  better  prospects  in  life,  and  inheriting 
apparently  the  migratory  instincts  of  his  father,  who  had  per 
haps  grown  weary  of  his  Indiana  home,  he  plunged  with  him 
into  the  further  West,  and  sought  and  found  a  new  settlement 
on  an  unreclaimed  quarter-section  of  the  public  lands  in  Cen 
tral  Illinois.  That  he  must  have  shared  the  humble  labors  of 
that  parent  in  winning  his  new  acquisition  from  a  state  of 
nature  into  a  habitable  abode  for  man,  is  obvious  from  the 
fact  that  so  limited  an  area,  on  the  extremest  frontier  of  civili 
zation,  could  have  afforded  no  great  scope  for  employment  but 
with  the  axe  or  plow,  and  no  means  whatever  for  mental  culture 
or  development,  except  those  powers  of  thought  and  observa 
tion,  which  the  solitudes  of  nature,  and  the  communion  of  the 
forest  and  the  field,  have  sometimes  awakened  in  those  gifted 
spirits  that  seem  to  be  immediately  inspired  of  God.  Writhin  a 


528  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

year  or  two,  however,  the  occurrence  of  what  was  called  the 
'Black  Hawk  War,'  drew  him  from  a  seclusion  which  must 
have  been  extremely  irksome  to  a  youth  of  lively  temperament, 
and  overflowing  health,  by  offering  the  temptation  which  the 
pursuit  of  arms  almost  invariably  presents  to  the  young  and 
ambitious  spirits  of  the  land.  He  enlisted  in  a  company  of 
volunteers,  who  forthwith  selected  him  as  their  captain,  but 
his  aspirations  for  military  renown  were  soon  cut  short  by  the 
unexpected  termination  of  the  war.  His  next  appearance  is  as 
a  candidate  for  the  Legislature  of  the  State,  to  which  he  was 
repeatedly  elected,  and  about  the  same  time  he  turned  his  atten 
tion  to  the  study  of  the  law,  and  was  duly  admitted  to  the  Bar. 
What  preparation  he  may  have  made  for  this  transition  to 
another  and  a  higher  field  of  labor,  is  unknown  to  us.  He  has 
the  credit  of  confessing,  with  that  simplicity  which  drew  from 
him  the  acknowledgment  that  he  had  never  read  the  works  of 
the  great  master  of  the  drama,  that  he  had  enjoyed  the  advantage 
of  but  six  months'  schooling  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life. 
That  he  had  read  such  books  as  were  accessible  to  him,  is  not 
to  be  doubted.  Report  says  that  he  had  picked  up  in  some  way 
a  little  knowledge  of  surveying,  which  may  have  served  to  train 
and  discipline  his  reasoning  faculty,  and  was,  as  will  be  remem 
bered,  the  youthful  employment  of  the  great  Washington  him 
self.  Beyond  this,  however,  little  was  required  in  the  infant 
condition  of  a  frontier  settlement,  which  would  have  few 
attractions  for  men  of  such  acquirements  as  only  an  old  com 
munity  could  afford;  although  it  is  not  to  be  questioned  that 
some  of  the  robustest  intellects  in  the  land  have  been  nurtured 
in  those  primitive  and  truly  republican  schools,  where  no  hot 
bed  culture  was  admissible,  and  every  sickly  plant  was  doomed 
to  die.  Whether  he  succeeded  in  attaining  any  great  distinction 
in  his  new  profession,  where  success  is  dependent  generally  on 
a  peculiarity  of  taste  or  mental  structure,  and  where  industry 
is  so  often  an  over-match  for  talent,  is  by  no  means  clear.  We 
do  know,  however,  that  his  abilities  and  worth  were  duly 
recognized  at  home  by  his  triumphant  election  in  1846  to  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States — where  he  served,  however,  but 
for  a  single  term — as  well  as  by  the  award  to  him,  by  common 
consent,  of  the  championship  of  the  Free  State  party,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  controversy  which  grew  out  of  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill.  In  1856  he  was  presented  by  his  State,  and 
supported  largely,  as  a  candidate  for  the  office  of  Vice  President 
on  the  Republican  ticket  of  that  year ;  and  in  the  canvass  of  1858, 
as  the  accepted  candidate  for  Senator,  he  discussed  before  the 
people  of  Illinois  the  question  of  the  extension  of  slavery  into 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      529 

the  Territories,  in  a  series  of  debates  which  riveted  the  attention 
of  the  nation,  by  the  clearness  of  their  statements,  and  the 
immense  logical  power  which  they  displayed.  It  was  perhaps  to 
the  publicity  of  these  efforts  that  he  was  mainly  indebted  for 
the  great  distinction  conferred  on  him  by  the  Convention  of 
1860,  in  singling  him  out,  above  all  competitors,  as  the  standard- 
bearer  of  the  army  of  freedom  in  that  memorable  campaign. 

"And  this  brief  narrative — compiled  from  unauthentic 
sources,  and  making  no  pretension  to  the  accuracy  of  biography 
— is  a  summary  of  his  career  until  called  by  Providence  to  enact 
a  part  that  has  been  assigned  to  few  men  in  history.  How  he 
performed  his  duty  is  perhaps  best  evidenced  by  the  difficulties 
he  had  to  meet,  and  the  final  result  of  the  war  which  pervaded 
his  whole  administration.  He  bargained  only  for  a  peaceful 
rule,  like  that  of  his  predecessors.  If  he  could  have  foreseen 
the  magnitude  of  the  task  that  was  before  him,  he  might  well 
have  shrunk  from  the  trial.  He  would  have  been  a  bold  man, 
who,  with  such  fore-knowledge,  would  willingly  have  taken  the 
helm  in  such  a  storm  as  howled  around  him  on  his  advent,  and 
strained  the  timbers  of  the  ship  of  state  for  so  many  long  and 
weary  years.  To  him  the  place,  however  exalted  and  honorable, 
was  one  of  anxious  and  unsleeping  care.  No  man  can  tell  how 
much  of  agony  it  cost  a  heart  like  his.  It  is  to  that  point  of 
his  career,  however,  that  our  inquiries  are  to  be  directed,  if  we 
would  know  the  man.  The  history  of  the  great  rebellion,  com 
prehending  all  or  nearly  all  of  his  public  life,  is  emphatically 
his  history.  It  began  and  ended  with  his  administration  of  the 
government.  He  succeeded  to  a  divided  sceptre.  He  lived  just 
long  enough  to  re-unite  the  broken  fragments — to  re-plant  the 
starry  banner  of  our  fathers  on  the  battlements  whence  treason 
had  expelled  it — to  see  the  arch-apostate  who  had  seduced  a 
third  part  of  the  States  from  their  allegiance,  a  wanderer  and  a 
fugitive — and  to  leave  to  his  successor  a  once  more  undivided 
Union. 

"With  this  slender  preparation,  however,  and  with  no 
previous  training  in  the  mysteries  of  government,  he  was 
translated  to  the  Federal  capital  in  the  most  eventful  crisis  of 
our  history,  to  take  upon  his  shoulders  such  a  burthen  of  respon 
sibility  as  no  President  had  ever  been  called  upon  to  bear.  The 
assassin  lurked  upon  his  path.  Already  the  Southern  horizon 
was  red  with  the  fires  of  incipient  rebellion.  Already  State  after 
State,  encouraged  either  by  the  premeditated  treason,  or  the 
helpless  pusillanimity  of  the  miserable  imbecile  who  stood  pale 
and  trembling  at  the  capital,  had  shot  madly  from  its  orbit.  The 
strongholds  of  the  Union,  constructed  at  great  expense  for  the 


53O  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

protection  of  the  South,  had  been  either  seized  by  violence,  or 
basely  surrendered  by  their  garrisons.  The  seat  of  our  National 
Government  was  reeking  with  disloyalty.  While  treason  was 
the  badge  of  respectability  there,  Republicanism  was  tabooed  as 
something  that  was  only  vulgar  and  vile.  The  Bureaus  of  the 
several  Departments  were  swarming  with  malignants,  who 
were  looking  anxiously  in  the  direction  of  the  South  for  an 
irruption  of  the  rebel  hordes,  and  ready  to  surrender  the 
keys  of  their  offices  on  the  first  summons  of  the  public  enemy. 
There  was  no  direction  in  which  the  President  could  turn  for 
support,  in  the  contingency  of  any  concerted  movement  to  pre 
vent  his  inauguration.  The  army,  inconsiderable  in  itself,  had 
been  detached  to  distant  cantonments,  where  it  could  afford  no 
aid,  and  was  sure  to  become  an  easy  prey.  Its  officers — the 
eleves  of  our  military  school — the  most  of  Southern  birth,  but 
some  of  Northern  origin,  debauched  by  their  associations,  or 
with  naturally  slavish  instincts  and  unbounded  admiration  for 
Southern  institutions  and  Southern  men,  were  generally  dis 
affected  to  the  Union,  whose  bread  they  ate,  and  whose  flag  they 
were  s\vorn  to  defend.  Not  a  ship  of  war  was  to  be  found 
upon  our  coast ;  not  a  soldier  at  the  capital  to  defend  the  person 
of  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  country,  except,  perhaps,  a  slender 
escort,  of  more  than  doubtful  loyalty,  improvised  for  the  occa 
sion  by  the  Lieutenant  General,  upon  the  urgent  importunity 
of  men  who  realized  the  danger  of  a  coup  d'etat,  as  the  new 
President  himself  did  not.  There  was  nothing,  in  fact,  but  the 
mere  prestige  of  the  office,  the  habitual  respect  for  the  person  of 
the  Chief  Magistrate,  and  the  probable  re-action  that  would 
ensue  upon  any  demonstration  of  violence,  and,  above  all,  the 
well-understood  determination  of  the  thousands  of  brave  men 
who  were  assembled  there  from  the  free  States,  secretly  armed 
and  ready  for  such  an  emergency,  to  prevent  or  punish  any 
attempt  that  might  be  made  on  the  life  of  the  President.  And 
yet  he  did  not  shrink  from  the  ordeal,  but  there,  on  the  steps 
of  the  capitol,  under  the  blazing  sunlight,  in  the  presence  of  all 
that  innumerable  concourse,  and  in  the  hearing  of  a  listening 
world,  in  terms  of  kindness,  and  not  of  menace,  but  with  a 
seriousness  and  solemnity  that  were  not  to  be-  mistaken,  he 
proclaimed  his  firm  and  unalterable  determination  to  employ 
all  the  powers  vested  in  him  by  the  Constitution  in  maintaining 
the  integrity  and  inviolability  of  the  Union,  from  sea  to  sea,  and 
from  the  lakes  to  the  gulf,  and  restoring  to  its  authority  every 
State  and  fortress  that  had  been  wrested  from  it  by  the  hands 
of  treason.  Rebellion,  already  organized  and  armed,  and  con 
fident  of  its  superior  prowess,  received  the  announcement  with 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      53! 

derisive  laughter,  as  but  an  idle  vaunt  on  the  part  of  a  President 
who  was  without  a  soldier  or  a  ship  to  batter  down  the  very 
feeblest  of  its  strongholds.  He  knew  that  there  was  an  army  in 
the  fields  and  workshops  of  the  North,  which  only  awaited  his 
call  to  do  this  work.  A  million  of  stalwart  men  sprung  to  their 
arms  upon  his  summons,  and  the  pledge  was  redeemed.  The 
boastful  chivalry  went  down  before  the  sturdy  arms  and  stormy 
valor  of  the  men  they  had  so  foolishly  despised;  and  where  are 
they  now  who  laughed  to  scorn  the  admonitions  of  that  day,  and 
arrogantly  proclaimed  to  their  deluded  followers  that  the  capital 
of  the  nation,  and  the  rich  spoils  of  the  opulent  and  crowded 
cities  of  the  North,  should  be  given  to  their  victorious  arms? 
They  have  found  only  a  grave,  where  they  meditated  an  easy 
conquest.  But  Abraham  Lincoln  lived  to  see  his  pledge  ful 
filled.  His  work  was  done,  and  he  too  sleeps  with  his  fathers. 
It  had  cost  many  priceless  lives  to  do  that  work.  It  was  to  be 
consummated  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  own — the  most  priceless, 
perhaps,  of  all.  The  demon  which  he  exorcised  was  to  collect 
all  his  remaining  strength  into  one  expiring  blow  at  the  head  of 
his  destroyer,  as  he  fled  howling,  and  in  despair,  from  the  seat 
of  his  long  cherished  but  now  forever  lost  dominion  upon  earth. 
The  final  catastrophe  was  in  precise  keeping  with  the  whole  spirit 
of  the  bloody  drama  which  it  concluded.  Beginning  in  treason, 
with  perjury,  and  robbery,  and  starvation,  and  murder,  as  its 
handmaids,  it  could  not  have  ended  more  fittingly  than  in  the 
cruel,  and  cowardly,  and  revengeful  assassination  of  the  heroic 
leader  who  had  stricken  down  the  sacrilegious  hand  that  was 
lifted  against  the  nation's  life.  Miserable  and  short-sighted 
revenge !  The  blow  which  prostrated  our  honored  chief,  while 
it  made  no  interregnum,  and  paralyzed  no  nerve  of  the  govern 
ment,  has  been  his  apotheosis.  The  hand  of  the  assassin  is 
already  cold.  A  swift  retribution  has  overtaken  the  miscreant 
who  was  put  upon  this  work,  while  the  hands  of  justice  are 
already  laid  upon  the  highest  of  its  guilty  authors,  and  the 
avenger  of  blood  is  tracking  his  accomplices  to  their  last 
retreat.  But  they,  too,  will  not  altogether  die.  The  obscurity 
that  they  might  well  pray  for,  is  not  for  such  as  them.  There 
can  be  no  oblivion  for  such  a  parricide.  The  flash  of  that 
fatal  pistol  in  the  theatre  at  Washington,  which  sent  its  leaden 
contents  crashing  through  the  brain  of  our  honored  magistrate, 
will  blaze  around  them  like  the  gleam  of  the  assassins'  daggers 
that  sought  the  great  hearts  of  Henry  of  Navarre  and  the 
heroic  Prince  of  Orange,  and  light  their  memories  down,  from 
age  to  age,  through  the  long  corridors  of  history. 


532  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

"It  was  a  disadvantage,  too,  of  no  small  moment  to  an 
untried  man,  to  find  himself  surrounded  by  counselors  of  fair 
repute,  who  had  either  nothing  to  propose,  or  doubted  the  power 
or  rightfulness  of  coercion  in  a  government  like  this,  or  thought 
that  even  separation  itself  was  better  than  war,  or  hoped  to  patch 
up  an  ignoble  truce,  by  compromising  the  questions  in  dispute, 
and  furnishing  additional  and  perpetual  guarantees  to  the 
insatiable  interest  which  had  come  to  despise  even  the  privilege 
of  ruling  this  nation,  as  it  had  done  before.  It  will  scarcely  be 
believed  in  future  times,  how  many  there  were,  enjoying  the 
reputations  of  statesmen,  who  were  committed  to  one  or  other 
of  these  opinions.  But  while  the  question  hung  suspended 
between  these  conflicting  views,  although  every  concession  had 
been  proposed,  and  every  effort  toward  compromise  had  failed, 
and  while  the  nation  was  sweating  in  mortal  agony  with  seven 
States  defying  its  authority,  and  formidable  batteries  rising 
from  day  to  day  under  the  shadow  of  our  own  guns,  around 
our  fortresses  in  Charleston  harbor,  the  knot  was  happily  untied 
by  the  impatient  hands  of  the  conspirators  themselves.  To 
secure  the  co-operation  of  the  States  that  still  stood  hesitating, 
it  was  deemed  necessary  'to  fire  the  Southern  heart'  by  some 
stupendous  act  of  violence,  that  should  dig  an  impassable  gulf 
between  them  and  us;  and  their  guns  were  accordingly  trained, 
amid  the  sounds  of  revelry  and  the  exultant  huzzas  of  an  intoxi 
cated  populace,  upon  the  old  flag  that  was  still  floating  over 
the  feeble  garrison  of  Sumter.  It  was  a  gay  tourney  for  fair 
ladies  and  gallant  knights — an  easy  victory,  but  a  short  lived 
triumph.  The  walls  of  Sumter  crumbled  under  the  terrific 
storm  that  burst  upon  them  from  the  hundred  iron  throats  that 
girdled  them  around  as  with  a  cataract  of  fire,  and  its  garrison 
succumbed.  But  the  echoes  of  those  guns  lighted  up  a  flame  in 
the  colder  North,  that  melted  down  all  party  ties  with  more  than 
furnace  heat,  and  was  only  to  be  extinguished  in  the  blood  of 
the  fools  and  madmen  who  had  been  taught  by  their  Northern 
auxiliaries  to  look  for  no  such  answer  to  their  defiant  challenge. 
The  President  could  hesitate  no  longer.  Menace  and  insult  had 
had  developed  into  open  war,  and  the  time  had  now  come  to 
redeem  the  pledge  that  he  had  made,  by  summoning  the  free 
men  of  America  to  defend  their  flag.  He  called,  and  such  an 
answer  was  returned  as  no  people  had  ever  before  given  to  the 
summons  of  its  chief.  From  town  and  country,  from  the  lum 
bermen  of  the  pine  woods  of  the  Madawaska  to  the  trappers 
of  the  upper  Missouri,  and  the  gold  hunters  of  the  more  distant 
Sierras,  as  the  reverberations  of  that  trumpet-blast  leaped  from 
mountain  to  mountain,  and  pealed  over  the  great  plains  and 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     533 

along  the  mighty  rivers  of  the  land,  the  old,  the  middle-aged, 
and  the  young,  with  one  common  impulse,  and  without  distinc 
tion  of  party  or  of  creed,  with  but  a  hurried  farewell  to  wife, 
and  children,  and  home,  were  seen  thronging  the  iron  highways 
to  their  respective  capitals,  and  begging  for  the  privilege  of 
enrolling  themselves  among  the  defenders  of  their  country,  and 
dying,  if  need  be,  under  the  shadow  of  its  flag.  It  was  no 
monarch's  battle.  It  was  their  own  honored  and  glorious  banner, 
the  symbol  alike  of  their  power  and  their  privileges,  that  had 
been  insulted  and  defied.  Away  with  the  idea  of  caution  and 
slow  resolve,  when  such  huge  interests  are  at  stake.  That  is 
for  diplomatists  and  strategists.  Men  do  not  stop  to  calculate 
the  odds,  the  chances,  or  the  dangers,  when  it  is  a  question  of 
resenting  contumely,  or  defending  the  object  of  their  love.  They 
did  not  wait  to  be  schooled  to  a  sense  of  their  interests,  or 
duties,  or  the  necessities  of  the  times,  any  more  than  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  use  of  arms.  To  affirm,  as  has  not  been  unusual 
in  high  places,  that  they  require  to  be  educated  by  their  rulers 
up  to  the  level  of  such  an  occasion,  is  to  ignore  the  whole 
experience  of  that  memorable  day,  whose  manifestations  took 
the  doubting  by  surprise,  and  so  utterly  confounded  all  the 
calculations  of  the  few  amongst  ourselves  who  looked  for,  and 
had  promised  a  divided  North.  The  call  itself  was  but  a 
response  to  the  popular  desire,  which  had  anticipated  it.  The 
answer  was  an  assurance  to  the  Government  that  it  would  be 
sustained  in  every  measure  of  severity  that  the  crisis  might 
demand. 

"But  it  was  a  still  greater  disadvantage  to  the  new  Execu 
tive,  that  the  full  import  of  this  rebellion  was  not  even  compre 
hended  by  many  of  those  to  whom  he  was  expected  to  look  for 
advice,  in  a  crisis  where  the  ordinary  responsibilities  of  the 
office  were  so  much  enlarged.  Although  its  causes,  its  history, 
and  its  objects  were  obviously  such  as  to  render  a  compromise 
impossible — although  the  leaders  of  the  revolt  had  voluntarily 
abdicated  their  places  in  the  government,  and  gone  out  from  us, 
when  they  might  have  dictated  their  own  terms — and  although 
they  had  contemptuously  spurned  every  overture  for  negotia 
tion,  and  affected  no  concealment  of  their  deep-seated  and 
implacable  hatred  not  only  of  ourselves,  but  of  our  very  form  of 
government — there  were  still  sanguine  and  credulous  men  in 
eminent  positions,  who  believed  that  the  rebellion  could  be  sup 
pressed  in  ninety  days — not  by  war,  but  by  diplomacy — not  by 
striking  at  its  causes,  but  by  ignoring  them — not  by  punishing 
its  authors,  but  by  indulging  them — not  by  a  change  of  measures, 
but  by  a  persistence  in  the  very  policy  that  had  brought  it  on. 


534  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

In  the  view  of  men  like  these,  every  forward  step  was  fraught 
with  danger.  Even  the  simple  and  obvious  proposition  to  repeal 
the  law  that  made  the  capital  of  a  free  nation  the  home  and 
market  of  the  slave,  and  the  fruitful  nursery  of  the  rebellion 
itself,  was  represented  as  so  full  of  mischief,  at  such  a  time, 
that  the  President  himself  was  almost  staggered  by  the  shadowy 
forms  of  terror  that  were  evoked  to  stay  his  hand.  If  he  had 
yielded  to  them,  we  should  not  have  reached  the  great  measure 
of  the  proclamation  for  at  least  another  year,  if  ever.  It  met 
the  same  resistance  as  the  other,  but  the  practical  good  sense 
of  the  President,  backed  up  and  fortified  by  the  high  courage 
and  unanswerable  logic  of  at  least  one  member  of  his  Cabinet,  at 
length  overmastered  all  these  influences,  and  the  great  charter 
of  the  black  man  was  produced  before  them  as  a  measure  upon 
which  he  had  already  privately  determined,  upon  his  own 
responsibility  to  the  nation.  It  is  due  to  the  just  fame  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  that  the  world,  instead  of  dividing  the  honor 
of  the  act  with  other  possible  claimants  in  future  times,  should 
know  how  little  he  was  aided  in  the  task — how  much  of  opposi 
tion  he  was  called  upon  to  meet — and  how  much  of  moral 
heroism  that  act  involved.  It  was  no  trifling  disadvantage,  cer 
tainly,  to  a  new  and  unpracticed  statesman,  in  a  position  of  such 
unusual  responsibility,  to  be  surrounded  with  men  of  weak 
nerves,  who  had  not  the  courage  to  face  the  exigency  which  their 
own  counsels  had  precipitated.  The  occasion  called  for  intrepid 
statesmen,  as  well  as  generals,  who,  with  a  just  confidence  in  the 
people,  instead  of  stopping  to  calculate  the  possible  odds,  and 
betraying  a  hesitation  that  at  least  resembled  fear,  and  thereby 
throwing  away  all  the  advantages  which  the  possession  of  the 
government  gave  them,  would  have  struck  at  once,  and  with 
lightning-like  rapidity,  at  the  very  heart  of  the  rebellion.  The 
sublime  response  which  the  people  had  already  made,  was  an 
assurance  that  they  could  be  trusted.  It  was  a  sore  trial,  too, 
for  them  to  see  their  fiery  legions  condemned  to  stagnate  in 
inglorious  repose,  until,  in  some  instances,  their  terms  of  service 
were  about  expiring,  while  their  very  capital  was  beleaguered 
by  an  insolent  banditti,  whom  they  could  have  swept  like  chaff 
before  them.  No  government  in  the  world  could  have  survived 
it  but  our  own,  and  it  is  no  marvel,  therefore,  that  some  of 
the  most  enlightened  statesmen  of  Europe,  educated  in  the 
traditional  notion  that  the  democratic  idea  was  a  delusion,  and 
that  a  government  like  ours,  though  formidable  in  external  war, 
was  helpless  for  self-conservation,  and  must  fall  a  prey  to  the 
first  intestine  convulsion,  and  reasoning  from  the  abject  condi 
tion  and  low  intelligence  of  the  people  around  them,  should  have 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      535 

hurried  to  recognize  the  rebels  as  belligerents,  and  staked  their 
reputations  on  the  opinion  that  the  great  American  Republic, 
the  wonder  and  terror  of  the  world,  and  the  standing  reproach  of 
all  its  monarchies,  was  rent  irreparably  in  twain.  I  do  not  speak 
of  this  now  as  a  thing  to  be  regretted.  It  seems  as  though,  in 
the  providence  of  God,  it  had  been  intended  not  only  to  cleanse 
this  land  of  its  great  sin,  but  to  confound  the  unbelievers  in 
the  high  capabilities  and  lofty  destinies  of  our  race,  by  passing 
us  through  the  fiercest  fire,  and  contriving  every  possible  test — 
even  to  the  final  catastrophe  of  the  assassination  of  our  Federal 
Head — to  establish  the  great  fact  of  the  ability  of  man  to  govern 
himself,  and  to  dispense,  under  all  circumstances,  with  the 
machinery  of  hereditary  rule.  A  different  policy,  by  rendering 
the  task  an  easier  and  a  speedier  one,  would  have  left  the  world 
and  ourselves  much  to  learn  of  our  resources  and  capabilities, 
and  much  of  the  barbarism  of  that  institution  which  it  would 
have  left  substantially  intact,  to  breed  new  rebellions,  and 
exact  new  sacrifices  from  our  posterity. 

"It  was  under  these  influences,  strengthened  as  they  were 
by  an  apprehension  not  apparently  removed  by  the  enthusiasm 
with  which  they  responded  to  the  call  of  the  President,  that  the 
people  were  not  yet  up  to  the  real  level  of  the  crisis,  and  not 
prepared  for  the  adoption  of  such  earnest  measures  of  repres 
sion  as  a  state  of  war  demanded,  that  the  armies  of  the  Union 
were  brought  into  the  field.  It  was  not  for  the  Chief  Magis 
trate,  of  course,  to  direct  their  operations  in  person.  But  his 
generals  were  unfortunately  either  men  of  Southern  birth,  or 
men  who  had  been  educated  in  a  feeling  of  profound  reverence 
for  Southern  institutions.  With  them  it  was  almost  profanation 
to  invade  the  sacred  soil  of  a  sovereign  State.  With  them  the 
treason  of  their  ancient  comrades,  if  not  a  chivalrous  virtue,  was 
only  the  infirmity  of  a  noble  mind.  Perjury  and  ingratitude  the 
blackest  and  most  damning — rebellion  and  treachery  the  most 
wanton  and  unprovoked — implied  no  stain  upon  the  personal 
honor  of  their  enemy.  Longstreet  and  Jackson  were  models  of 
Christian  virtue — Lee  and  Beauregard  unblemished  specimens 
of  elegant  and  well-bred  gentlemen — every  ingrate  especially, 
who  had  betrayed  the  Government  that  reared  him,  an  honorable 
man.  No  'kind  regard'  was  forfeited  by  their  base  defection; 
no  hand  refused  in  friendly  greeting,  though  red  with  a  brother's 
blood;  no  fervent  'God  bless  you/  left  unuttered  because  the 
recipient  had  blackened  his  soul  with  the  foulest  and  basest 
crime  that  history  records.  To  have  opened  their  camps  to  a 
loyal  negro,  would  have  been  a  violation  of  the  constitutional 
rights  of  his  rebel  master.  Knightly  courtesy  required  his 


536  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

return.  To  have  barkened  to  the  evidence  he  brought  of  the 
strength  and  position  of  the  enemy,  would  have  been  a  violation 
of  the  rule  which  disqualified  him  as  a  witness  against  his 
master.  Rebel  exaggerations  for  purposes  of  effect,  were  more 
acceptable  than  the  simple,  unvarnished  truth  from  the  lips  of 
a  runaway  contraband.  What  success  was  to  be  hoped  for, 
with  such  instruments  ?  The  President  himself  both  saw  and  felt 
the  difficulty.  His  patience  was  severely  tried,  but  what  was  he 
to  do?  If  he  ordered  a  movement  in  advance,  the  weather  was 
either  too  cold  or  too  hot — the  mud  was  axle-deep  or  the  dust 
intolerable.  If  made,  it  was  done  reluctantly,  or  with  a  protest, 
and  the  responsibility  of  a  failure  was  with  him.  If  refused, 
and  he  threatened  to  displace  the  officer,  it  was  perhaps  sug 
gested  to  him,  that  the  army  or  the  people  would  revolt,  while 
they  were  actually  chafing  with  impatience — the  rebellion  grow 
ing  in  strength — and  the  friends  of  the  Government  beginning 
to  despair.  In  this  dilemma,  it  became  necessary  for  him  to 
take  up  the  question  of  an  entire  change  of  policy.  The  struggle 
was  a  long  and  painful  one.  If  he  had  felt  at  liberty  to  consult 
the  promptings  of  his  own  mind  and  heart,  in  a  case  where  the 
life  of  a  nation  was  depending  on  his  decision,  it  would  have 
ended  as  soon  as  it  was  begun.  But  his  habitual  caution,  inten 
sified  by  a  just  sense  of  his  great  responsibility  as  an  officer,  held 
his  judgment  in  abeyance.  His  own  good  sense,  however, 
triumphed  at  the  last.  Unaided  but  by  the  counsels  of  a  faithful 
few,  he  took  up  the  case,  calculated  all  the  elements  that  entered 
into  it,  and  arrived,  by  a  strictly  logical  process,  of  which  the 
steps  are  now  obvious,  at  the  conclusion  that  the  rebellion  could 
only  be  conquered  by  the  emancipation  of  the  slave.  He  put 
that  result  in  the  shape  of  a  Proclamation,  and  then  summoned 
his  Cabinet  together,  not  to  advise,  but  to  hear  what  he  had 
determined.  The  picture  of  the  consultation  over  this  important 
document,  is  the  merest  fancy-piece.  The  point  was  decided  by 
him  before  they  met,  and  there  was  no  demur,  because  there  was 
no  further  room  for  objection. 

"Nothing,  however,  is  clearer  than  the  fact  that  it  was  not 
the  original  purpose  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  interfere  with  slavery  in 
the  States.  With  all  his  strong  convictions  that  it  was  a  crime — 
that,  in  his  own  terse  language,  'if  slavery  was  not  wrong,  there 
was  nothing  wrong' — his  respect  for  the  constitutional  rights  of 
the  South  was  such  as  to  over-ride  his  own  private  sympathies 
for  the  bondsman.  With  him,  the  leading,  over-ruling  thought 
— the  idea  nearest  to  his  heart — was  the  preservation  of  our 
glorious  Union,  as  God's  chosen  instrument  on  earth,  and  the 
one  best  fitted,  with  all  its  defects,  to  secure  the  peace  and  happi- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     537 

ness  of  man.  The  other  question  was  entirely  subordinate  to 
this.  He  was  willing — to  quote  from  him  again — 'to  save  the 
Union,  with  slavery  if  he  could,  or  without  it,  if  he  could.'  His 
first  idea,  encouraged,  if  not  inspired  by  the  men  who  had  then 
his  confidence,  was,  that  it  could  only  be  saved  by  tenderness  to 
that  interest,  whose  extreme  sensibility  to  danger — to  say  no 
worse  of  it — had  brought  all  these  troubles — these  almost 
apocalyptic  woes  upon  the  land.  Under  these  impressions,  the 
war  was  waged  for  eighteen  months,  in  such  a  way  as  to  do 
as  little  harm  as  possible  to  that  institution  in  the  hope  that  the 
rebels  might  be  conciliated — as  they  had  never  been  before — 
by  the  forbearance  of  the  Government.  It  was  only  the  current 
of  events — the  failure  of  this  policy — the  fuel  furnished  by  the 
great  expense,  the  tardy  progress,  and  the  inadequate  results  of 
the  war,  to  the  growing  discontent  of  the  friends  of  the  Govern 
ment  in  the  North — and  the  conviction  that  the  policy  of  saving 
the  Union  with  slavery  must  give  way  to  the  opposite  policy,  if  it 
was  to  be  saved  at  all — that  drifted  him  into  the  position  assumed 
for  the  first  time  in  the  Proclamation,  and  maintained  with 
unwavering  constancy  until  the  last  hour  of  his  life.  That  he 
should  ever  have  been  persuaded  to  believe  it  possible  to  con 
ciliate  the  men  who  had  voluntarily  abdicated  their  places  in 
the  government,  only  because  it  was  obvious  that  they  could  no 
longer  hope  to  rule  it  permanently,  is  to  be  set  down  more  to 
the  account  of  his  habitual  caution,  his  strong  conservative 
temperament,  his  deference  to  older  heads,  and  his  desire  to  give 
full  scope  to  an  experiment  of  an  apparently  innocuous  character, 
enforced  by  the  counsels  of  almost  every  man  around  him,  than 
to  the  convictions  of  his  own  unbiased  judgment.  The  case 
was  one  of  conflicting  systems  and  ideas,  that  might  admit  of  a 
truce,  but  of  no  compromise.  It  would  have  been  but  an  adjourn 
ment  of  the  question  until  the  antagonistic  forces  had  taken 
breath  for  a  fresh  struggle,  while  the  rebel  element  was  "strength 
ening  itself  in  the  meanwhile  for  new  aggressions.  The  enforced 
connection  between  Liberty  and  Slavery  was  worse  than 
incestuous.  God  and  nature  had  decreed  an  eternal  divorce 
between  them.  Our  fathers,  it  is  true,  had  made  the  experiment 
of  reconciling  these  hostile  elements — not,  however,  under  the 
modern  hallucination  that  they  would  permanently  combine,  or 
coalesce,  but  only  to  keep  the  peace  between  them,  until  the 
weaker  should  disappear.  The  President  had  apprehended  this, 
when  he  declared  that  this  government  could  not  be  'half  free 
and  half  slave/  Mr.  Seward  himself  had  comprehended  it,  when 
he  characterized  the  war  between  the  two  systems  as  'an  irre 
pressible  conflict.'  As  well  attempt  to  blend  darkness  with  light. 


538  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

The  intermingled  elements  would  produce  only  a  disastrous 
twilight  with  perpetual  jars,  or,  as  the  one  or  other  interest 
predominated,  either  deepen  into  the  chaotic  gloom  where  the 
lost  spirits  are  supposed  to  dwell,  or  flush  into  the  rosy  light  of 
liberty.  The  Union  could  not  have  been  saved  with  slavery, 
any  more  than  a  man  could  be  made  immortal  with  the  seeds 
of  death  in  his  constitution.  The  inherent  vices  of  the  system 
were  sure  to  bring  about  a  conflict  at  last,  by  engendering  and 
fostering  the  spirit  that  inaugurated  it  here,  as  they  were 
equally  sure  to  give  to  the  contest  itself  a  character  of  fierce 
ness  and  atrocity  which  has  appertained  to  no  modern  war.  It 
was  but  a  new  phase  of  the  old  quarrel — as  old  as  government 
itself — which  has  shaken  the  kingdoms  and  hierarchies  of  the 
world,  and  was  destined  to  be  fought  out  here,  upon  a  wider 
arena  than  any  that  the  Old  World  could  offer.  If  it  was  not 
comprehended,  however,  by  ourselves,  the  governing  classes  in 
Europe,  and  the  advocates  of  unlimited  power  everywhere,  had 
not  failed  to  understand  it  from  the  beginning. 

"The  proclamation  of  freedom  was  the  first  decisive  measure 
of  the  war.  It  inaugurated  a  new  era,  and  proclaimed  the  pur 
pose  of  the  Government  to  wrest  from  the  rebels  their  most 
effective  weapon,  if  not  to  turn  it  against  their  own  bosoms.  The 
menace  of  it  was  at  first  derided  as  a  mere  brutum  fulmen,  by 
those  who  knew  what  was  to  be  its  effect,  and  dreaded  it  accord 
ingly.  As  soon  as  it  became  obvious  that  this  mode  of  attack 
was  about  to  fail,  the  policy  of  the  auxiliary  rebel  presses  of 
the  North  was  changed.  Dire  were  their  denunciations  then  of 
a  measure  represented  to  be  fraught  with  woe  to  helpless 
womanhood  and  feeble  infancy,  and  big  with  the  unutterable 
horrors  of  a  servile  war.  Its  promulgation  was  soon  after 
followed  by  the  elections  of  1862,  whose  unfavorable  results — 
attributable  only  to  the  public  weariness  of  the  inaction  of  our 
armies — were  adroitly  placed  to  the  account  of  this  threatened 
measure.  By  those  who  did  not  understand  the  temper  of  the 
President,  or  the  process  of  reasoning  by  which  he  had 
reached  that  point,  it  was  greatly  feared  that  he  would  falter, 
when  the  hour  of  trial  came.  But  alike  regardless  of  the  gloomy 
auguries  of  the  timid,  and  the  storm  of  obloquy  and  denuncia 
tion  that  burst  upon  him  from  the  sympathizers  with  the  rebellion 
here,  he  stood  unmoved,  and  the  bolt  sped  at  the  appointed  hour, 
and  shook  the  rebel  capital  to  its  foundations,  as  it  lodged  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  Confederacy.  Dismay  sat  on  every  face  at 
Richmond.  If  a  shell  had  exploded  in  that  pandemonium,  where 
those  dark  conspirators  against  the  rights  of  man  were  then 
assembled,  a  greater  consternation  could  not  have  followed.  In 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     539 

the  midst  of  'a  universal  hubbub  wild,  of  stunning  sounds,  and 
voices  all  confused,'  like  that  of  chaos,  which  'assailed  the  ear 
with  loudest  vehemence,'  a  dozen  members  were  on  their  feet  at 
once,  with  retaliatory  propositions  of  the  wildest  and  most 
atrocious  character.  But  if  there  was  gloom  there,  there  was 
joy  elsewhere.  The  great  heart  of  humanity  dilated  at  the 
tidings.  The  wearied  soldier  stretched  by  his  camp-fire,  and 
joined  till  then  in  unequal  battle,  was  lifted  up  and  comforted. 
Four  millions  of  bondsmen  raised  their  unfettered  hands  to 
Heaven  to  call  down  blessings  on  the  head  of  the  deliverer  who 
had  broken  their  chains.  The  patriot  felt  that  the  arm  of  the 
country  was  strengthened  at  home  and  abroad  by  the  act  that 
had  at  last  vindicated  the  solemn  truths  of  our  immortal  Declara 
tion,  and  placed  our  Government  once  more  in  harmony  with 
its  own  fundamental  principles.  Instead  of  any  further  necessity 
of  humbling  ourselves,  by  holding  out  to  foreign  powers  a  menace 
of  emancipation,  as  the  signal  for  a  servile  war,  in  order  to 
deter  them  from  an  intervention  which  they  never  would  have 
ventured  on — and  never  could.,  without  the  risk  of  ruin  to  them 
selves — it  was  no  longer  possible  for  any  Christian  nation  to  take 
sides  against  us.  It  was  the  turning  point  of  our  great  struggle, 
and  the  death  warrant  of  the  rebellion  itself.  And  it  was  just 
because  they  felt  and  knew  it,  that  it  roused  among  its  ruling 
spirits  all  the  devilish  passions  that  flamed  out  most  fiercely 
during  the  latter  period  of  the  war.  It  foreshadowed  the  appear 
ance  of  the  black  man  himself,  at  no  distant  day,  with  the  har 
ness  of  the  Union  on  his  back,  as  a  combatant  in  the  arena  on 
the  side  of  liberty.  From  that  day  forward,  with  only  the 
occasional  vicissitudes  to  which  all  wars  are  subject,  the  banner 
of  the  Republic,  with  its  new  blazonry  of  Freedom,  never 
drooped  or  went  backward  in  battle.  God  was  on  our  side.  The 
holiday  generals,  great  on  the  parade — the  strategic  imbeciles — 
the  half-hearted  martinets — who  were  more  solicitous  to  protect 
the  chattel  than  to  punish  the  treason  of  the  master,  gave  place 
to  a  race  of  earnest  men — heroes  of  the  Cromwellian  type — 
who  felt  the  inspiration  of  their  work,  and  with  a  faith  that 
no  reverses  could  shake,  and  no  disaster  disturb,  were  ever 
ready  to  second  or  anticipate  the  fiery  ardor  of  their  legions,  by 
giving  a  full  rein  to  the  spirit  that  had  chafed  and  fretted  under 
inglorious  restraint,  whether  it  was  to  plunge  into  the  fastnesses 
of  the  Rapidan,  to  scale  the  Alpine  passes  of  the  Tennessee,  or 
to  sweep  with  resistless  force  across  the  sunny  plains  of  Georgia. 
The  rebellion  was  doomed,  and  the  baleful  star  that  had  rushed 
up  with  the  velocity  of  a  meteor  into  the  forehead  of  the  sky, 
and  shed  its  portentous  glare  for  a  moment  upon  the  nations, 


54°  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

plunged  down  again  into  eternal  night,  to  be  remembered  here 
after  only  as  one  of  those  scourges  of  humanity,  that  are  some 
times  let  loose  upon  the  earth  for  high  and  inscrutable  purposes. 

"But  it  is  not  for  me  to  follow  the  history  of  this  long  and 
bloody  struggle  through  all  its  varying  fortunes  to  the  period 
of  its  final  consummation.  That  is  a  task  which  belongs  to  the 
historian.  It  has  some  points  of  interest,  however,  that  are  not 
unworthy  of  commemoration,  and  not  unsuited  to  the  occasion 
that  has  brought  us  here. 

"The  scene  that  has  just  passed  before  our  vision,  was  such 
as  has  been  presented  to  no  other  generation  of  men.  Few 
of  us  have  perhaps  fully  realized  the  importance  of  the  part  that 
has  been  assigned  to  us  in  history.  The  records  of  our  race 
have  nothing  to  offer  so  grand  and  imposing  as  this  bloody 
conflict,  in  its  magnitude,  its  causes,  its  theatre,  and  its  details. 
A  peaceful  nation,  schooled  only  in  the  arts  of  quiet  industry, 
entirely  unfamiliar  with  the  use  of  arms,  holding  itself  aloof 
from  the  political  complications  of  the  old  world,  and  but  thinly 
diffused  over  half  a  continent — imagining  no  evil,  and  fearing 
none  from  others — is  suddenly  startled  from  its  repose  by  the 
blare  of  the  trumpet,  and  the  roll  of  the  martial  drum,  and 
summoned  to  the  defense  of  its  institutions,  its  liberties,  its  very 
life,  against  a  wicked  conspiracy,  organized  in  its  own  bosom 
for  the  purpose  of  destroying  it.  It  not  only  responds  to  the  call, 
but  astonishes  the  world  by  an  exhibition  of  unanimity,  and  zeal, 
and  high  religious  fervor,  which  have  had  no  example  since  the 
era  of  the  Crusades.  In  utter  forgetfulness  of  self,  of  danger, 
and  of  the  comforts  and  endearments  of  home,  it  covers  the 
earth  with  its  living  tides,  as  it  rushes  to  the  rescue  of  the 
object  of  love.  Over  a  region  almost  as  wide  as  the  united 
kingdoms  of  Europe,  a  million  of  brave  hearts  are  marshaled  in 
armed  array,  with  implements  of  destruction  such  as  no  age 
hath  seen.  Along  the  Atlantic  coast,  across  the  great  rivers, 
and  the  boundless  prairies  of  the  mighty  West,  over  the  swamps 
and  savannas  of  the  distant  South,  through  forest,  brake  and 
wilderness,  through  bayou  and  morass,  over  rugged  mountains, 
and  along  the  cultivated  plains  that  laugh  with  the  abundance 
with  which  industry  has  covered  them — the  earth  shakes  with 
the  tread  of  embattled  hosts,  while  bay  and  gulf  swarm  with 
innumerable  prows,  and  the  shores  against  which  the  tides  of 
two  oceans  break,  are  belted  around  with  those  leviathans  of  the 
deep,  which  bear  our  thunders,  and  are  destined  hereafter  to 
proclaim  our  power  in  the  remotest  seas.  It  is  the  battle  of  the 
Titans,  with  fitting  accessories,  with  lists  scarce  less  ample,  with 
enginery  as  complete,  and  upon  a  theatre  almost  as  stupendous, 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     54! 

as  that  which  the  genius  of  Milton  has  assigned  to  the  armies  of 
angel  and  archangel  joined  in  battle  for  the  supremacy  of 
Heaven.  The  Old  World,  till  now  ignorant  of  the  power  that 
had  been  sleeping  here,  stands  amazed  at  an  exhibition  which 
its  united  kingdoms  would  in  vain  essay  to  match.  It  com 
prehends  at  once  the  whole  significance  of  the  struggle.  It  is 
the  world's  battle — the  same  that  has  been  fought  so  often  with 
other  watch-words,  and  on  other  fields — the  old  conflict  between 
antagonistic  social  forms — between  the  people  and  the  kings — 
between  the  privileges  of  caste  and  the  Republican  idea  of 
equality.  It  feels  that  the  interest  of  all  its  ancient,  and  hoary, 
and  moss-grown  establishments — its  thrones  and  hierarchies 
alike — resting  on  the  prescription  of  a  thousand  years,  and  but 
tressed  by  the  still  older  traditional  idea,  that  man  is  unfit  to 
govern  himself,  are  staked  on  the  issue  of  this  contest.  It 
sees,  or  thinks  it  sees,  in  the  martial  array  of  the  disciplined 
legions  of  the  Confederacy,  inflated  with  pride,  and  sneering  at 
the  base-born  hinds  and  greasy  mechanics  of  the  Free  States, 
the  impersonation  of  the  mailed  chivalry  who  rode  down  the 
miserable  acquerie  of  France  five  hundred  years  ago.  Forget 
ful  of  its  treaties  of  commerce  and  amity — oblivious  even  of 
its  own  apparent  interests,  in  the  maintenance  of  due  authority 
and  subordination  between  government  and  subject — ignoring 
alike  the  usages,  and  customs,  and  comity  of  nations — it  does 
not  find  patience  even  to  await  the  issue  of  a  battle.  The 
disruption  of  this  great  Republic — the  standing  reproach  and 
menace  of  royalty  in  all  its  forms — is  assumed  as  a  fact 
accomplished,  upon  this  mistaken  view,  and  the  additional 
postulate  of  its  statesmen,  that  a  structure  like  our  own,  how 
ever  prosperous  or  formidable  against  external  violence,  is 
without  the  power  of  self-preservation,  and  must  inevitably 
perish  on  the  first  internal  convulsion.  It  does  not  even  stop  to 
inquire  into  the  special  provocations,  if  any,  for  this  wanton 
and  wicked  rebellion  against  authority  and  humanity.  Pro 
fessing  to  make  war  against  the  slave  trade,  denouncing  it  as 
piracy,  and  employing  fleets  for  its  suppression,  it  does  not  even 
revolt  at  the  unexampled,  and  atrocious,  and  anti-christian  idea 
of  a  government,  boldly  and  shamelessly  declaring  its  only 
purpose  to  be  the  perpetuation  of  human  bondage — an  organized 
piracy,  and  a  systematic  attack  upon  the  rights  of  man.  In 
its  anxiety  to  aid  the  cause  on  which  its  own  institutions  are 
depending,  it  hurries  with  an  indecent  precipitancy  into  the 
recognition  of  a  belligerency,  that  will  enable  it  to  serve  the 
interest  in  which  it  dares  not  venture  openly  to  draw  its  sword, 
by  throwing  wide  its  ports  to  the  privateers  of  the  enemy,  and 


54-2  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

fitting  out  its  own  cruisers  to  prey  upon  our  commerce  on  the 
seas.  Its  govermental  press,  aided  by  its  hireling  scribblers  here, 
is  prostituted  to  the  base  employment  of  showing  the  inevitable 
failure  of  our  great  experiment,  by  maligning  our  brave  defend 
ers,  and  libeling  our  sainted  President.  Its  Ministers  at  our 
own  capital,  prompted  by  the  same  instincts,  and  sympathizing 
openly  with  our  enemies,  and  equally  ignorant  of  the  people  to 
whom  they  are  accredited,  advise  their  sovereigns,  and  are 
allowed  to  proclaim  here  openly  without  rebuke,  that  our 
career  as  a  nation  is  at  an  end;  and  inwardly  rejoice  with  them, 
that  a  power  declared  by  themselves  to  be  too  formidable  for 
the  world's  peace,  and  too  formidable  to  be  safely  met  either 
upon  the  sea  or  upon  the  land,  by  their  united  strength,  has 
perished  miserably  by  intestine  strife — the  supposed  inherent 
and  unavoidable  disease  of  the  republics  of  all  times. 

"How  great  has  been  its  error !  How  disappointed  all  its 
flattering  prognostications !  How  utterly  has  all  its  boasted 
wisdom  been  counfounded  by  events !  How  deeply  does  it  now 
tremble  in  the  presence  of  the  great  fact,  which  it  is  yet  reluctant 
to  acknowledge,  that  this  nation,  with  all  the  sympathies  of  the 
governments  of  the  world  against  it,  has  proved  its  indestructi 
bility,  by  a  trial  which  no  European  State  could  have  outlived ! 
But  how  inexpressibly  grand  and  sublime — what  a  spectacle  for 
men  and  angels,  has  been  the  attitude  of  this  people  throughout 
the  fiery  trials  of  these  four  eventful  years !  What  a  theme 
for  an  epic  such  as  Milton  or  Tasso  might  have  written — the 
great  Republic  of  the  Western  Hemisphere — the  world's  last 
champion — charged  with  the  loftiest  interests  that  ever  were 
committed  to  the  guardianship  of  man — belted  around  by 
enemies,  open  and  secret,  who  were  thirsting  for  its  destruction 
— torn  by  intestine  strife,  and  bleeding  at  every  pore — without 
the  sympathy  of  any  one  of  the  ruling  powers  of  earth,  and 
with  no  help  but  the  prayers  of  the  faithful  few  in  all  lands, 
who  looked  upon  its  star  as  the  last  hope  of  the  oppressed — 
standing  alone,  like  a  solitary  rock  in  the  ocean,  with  the 
tempests  howling  wildly  around  it,  but  flinging  off  the  angry 
surges  which  dash  and  break  against  its  sides,  and  bearing  aloft 
with  intrepid  and  unfaltering  hand,  amid  the  wild  uproar  of 
elemental  war,  the  broad  ensign  of  our  Fathers — the  pledge  of 
freedom  to  universal  man !  If  the  enemies  of  liberty  now 
tremble  in  our  presence,  it  is  not  more  from  the  dread  of  a 
resentment,  which  they  feel  to  have  been  justly  merited,  than 
from  an  apprehension  of  the  consequences  of  the  sublime  lesson 
of  constancy,  and  faith,  and  self-sacrifice,  and  persevering 
courage,  which  we  have  given  to  the  world,  throughout  a  con- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     543 

test  commenced  under  circumstances  the  most  adverse,  and 
prosecuted  by  the  people  themselves,  with  a  more  than  royal 
munificence,  as  essentially  their  war,  and  the  first  in  history  that 
has  been  so  recognized. 

"In  no  aspect  of  the  whole  case  were  the  eminent  prudence 
and  lofty  patriotism  of  our  great  leader  more  strongly  exempli 
fied,  than  in  the  forbearance  and  moderation  with  which  he 
ignored  these  transparent  evidences  of  unfriendliness  on  the 
part  of  foreign  governments,  aggravated,  as  they  were, 
by  the  most  indecent  personal  attacks  upon  himself.  Without 
personal  resentments,  and  great  enough  to  despise  abuse,  even 
if  he  had  felt  it,  he  knew  that  the  success  of  our  struggle  was 
the  best  answer  that  could  be  made  to  those  who  wished  us 
ill.  He  is  already  avenged  in  the  only  way  in  which  his  great 
heart  would  have  desired  it.  The  bloody  catastrophe  that 
hurried  him  from  our  sight,  has  flashed  upon  the  European 
world  with  a  suddenness  which  has  swept  down  the  barriers 
of  prejudice,  and  extorted  even  from  his  enemies  the  confession, 
that  in  him  a  truly  great  man — of  the  pure  American  type — 
of  far-reaching  sagacity — of  unexampled  modesty  and  modera 
tion — has  fallen.  The  powers  of  language  almost  fail  to  convey 
their  now  exalted  sense  of  the  high-souled  magnanimity  with 
which  he  has  forborne  to  respond  in  kind  to  the  many  provoca 
tions  that  have  been  offered.  He  is  pronounced  by  great 
authority  in  England  'a  king  of  men' — not  in  the  Homeric  sense, 
as  used  in  reference  to  the  Argive  chief — not  because,  like  the 
wrathful  Achilles,  whose  ire  was  fruitful  of  unnumbered  woes, 
he  was 

"  'Impiger,  iracundus,  inexorabilis,  acer/ — 

but  because  he  was  precisely  the  opposite  of  all  these — peace- 
loving  and  placable,  even  to  a  fault.  It  stands  admitted,  that 
no  word  of  his  can  now  be  found  in  all  his  foreign  intercourse, 
to  convey  a  menace  or  reproach.  And  then  his  exalted  benevo 
lence  of  heart — his  moderation  in  the  hour  of  victory  the 
greatest — the  entire  absence  of  all  natural  exultation  over  a 
fallen  foe — these,  these  are  confessed  to  be  so  rare,  as  to  take 
him  out  of  the  roll  of  vulgar  conquerors,  and  lift  him  high 
above  the  ordinary  level  of  humanity.  It  cost  him  nothing, 
however,  to  forgive,  or  even  to  compassionate  an  enemy.  He 
was  indeed  much  better  fitted  for  the  office  of  a  mediator,  than 
the  function  of  a  judge.  It  would  have  wrung  his  more  than 
woman's  heart  to  have  been  compelled  even  to  do  execution 
upon  the  guiltiest  of  the  conspirators,  as  it  did  to  put  his  name 
to  the  warrant  that  consigned  the  spy  or  the  deserter  to  eternity. 
In  thus  according  to  him  the  palm  of  magnanimity — which  is 


544  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

only  another  word  for  greatness  of  soul,  as  its  etymology  implies 
— the  highest  eulogy  has  been  pronounced  on  him  that  human 
lips  could  utter.  His  moderation  in  victory  was  but  part  and 
parcel  of  the  same  high  attribute. 

"Nor  is  it  to  be  forgotten,  while  making  these  admissions, 
that  there  were  other  circumstances  connected  with  this  rebel 
lion,  that  put  this  high  quality  to  the  severest  proof,  and  rendered 
it  impossible  to  indulge  a  sentiment  so  elevated  and  ennobling, 
without  great  peril  to  the  general  cause.  Though  war  is,  in  all 
its  aspects,  even  the  most  favorable,  the  direst  scourge  that 
Providence  has  ever  permitted  to  afflict  the  earth,  it  .has  no 
form  so  hideous  as  the  intestine  strife  that  arrays  brother 
against  brother,  and  arms  the  father  against  the  son  in  murder 
ous  conflict,  and  doubly  intensifies,  by  its  very  unnaturalness, 
all  the  brutal  and  ferocious  passions  of  our  fallen  nature.  The 
family  quarrel  is  proverbial  for  its  bitterness,  while  the  odium 
theologicum  is  the  stereotyped,  but  feeble  expression,  of  the 
rancor  which  has  sometimes  crept  into  the  controversies  of 
even  Christian  men.  In  the  present  case,  however,  there  was 
a  feature  superadded  on  the  one  side,  that  lent  ten-fold  additional 
horror  to  the  contest.  The  institution  of  human  slavery — the 
prolific  source  of  all  our  woes — tracked  into  the  palatial  man 
sions  of  the  lordly  proprietors,  by  a  Nemesis  which  always 
follows  upon  the  heels  of  a  great  wrong — as  though  Providence 
intended  that  Nature  violated  should  always  vindicate  herself — 
had  expelled  from  them  every  broad  fraternal  feeling — all  that 
recognized  the  common  brotherhood  of  humanity — and  ended 
by  unsexing  the  women,  and  making  wolves  and  tigers  of  the 
men.  All  that  was  said  of  that  institution,  sometimes  blas 
phemously  mis-named  divine,  by  the  author  of  the  great  Decla 
ration  himself,  had  been  already  realized  in  the  temper  and  con 
dition  of  Southern  society.  To  speak  of  these  as  barbarous, 
in  the  language  of  a  learned  and  eloquent  New  England  Sen 
ator,  was,  in  the  judgment  of  the  more  charitable  and 
fastidious  here,  an  offense  against  good  taste  and  truth,  that 
was  thought  by  them  to  have  deserved  the  felon  blow  that 
proved  it  to  be  true.  The  picture  drawn  by  him  was  supposed 
by  many  to  be  greatly  over-charged.  How  inadequately  he 
portrayed  its  hideous  aspect,  is  now  seen  in  its  conduct  of  this 
devastating  war,  which  it  has  forced  upon  the  country,  and 
under  which  it  has  buried  itself,  thank  God !  so  deep  that  it  can 
produce  no  future  eruption,  even  by  turning  uneasily  in  its 
grave.  Hell  never  engendered  such  a  monster,  though  'woman 
to  the  waist  and  fair'  as  her  who  sat  as  portress  at  its  gates. 
There  is  no  page  of  history  so  dark  and  damning  as  that  which 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     545 

will  record  the  fiendish  atrocities  of  which  it  has  been  guilty,  in 
an  age  of  light.  The  manufacture  of  the  bones  of  Union 
soldiers,  left  to  bleach  unburied  on  the  soil  where  they  fell, 
into  personal  ornaments  for  the  delicate  fingers  of  high-born 
Southern  dames,  or  drinking  cups  for  their  chivalrous  braves — 
the  mutilation  of  the  corpses  of  the  uncorrined  dead — the  cold 
blooded  and  systematic  starvation  and  butchery  of  prisoners  of 
war — the  efforts  to  destroy,  by  wholesale,  rail  road  trains,  filled 
with  innocent  women  and  children — the  employment  of  hired 
incendiaries  to  swing  the  midnight  torch  over  the  spires  of 
sleeping  cities — the  invocation  of  the  pestilential  agencies  of  the 
miasma  of  the  Southern  swamps — and  the  diabolical,  though 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  inoculate  our  seaboard  towns  with  the 
deadly  virus  of  the  plague — all  are  but  episodes  in  the  bloody 
drama  that  culminated  in  the  assassination  of  the  President.  The 
cannibal  of  the  South  Sea  Islands,  and  the  savage  of  the  Ameri 
can  forests,  who  dances  around  the  blazing  fagots  that  encircle 
and  consume  his  victim,  have  been  over-matched  in  cold-blooded 
ingenuity  of  torture,  by  the  refined  barbarians — the  Davises 
and  Lees,  and  other  'honorable  and  Christian'  gentlemen — who 
have  inspired  and  conducted  this  revolt.  God  will  witness  for 
the  North,  that  with  all  these  inhuman  provocations,  and  with 
a  necessity  that  seemed  almost  inevitable,  of  putting  an  end  to 
horrors  such  as  these,  by  a  system  of  just  and  exemplary 
retaliation,  it  has  dealt  with  these  great  criminals  with  a 
degree  of  forbearance  that  has  no  example,  and  has  but  too 
often  been  mistaken  by  them  for  want  of  spirit,  and  a  whole 
some  fear  of  their  great  prowess.  When  they  went  out,  they 
were  but  wayward  children,  and  we  entreated  them  kindly.  To 
spare  their  blood,  we  permitted  them  to  envelope  our  defenses 
at  Sumter,  without  resistance,  when  we  could  easily  have  pre 
vented  it.  To  keep  the  peace  with  them,  we  hesitated  even  to 
victual  its  starving  garrison.  When  we  were  smitten,  we  did 
not  even  smite  them  in  return.  It  was  only  when  they  flung 
insult  and  defiance  at  our  country's  flag,  that  we  felt  our  pulses 
quicken,  and  our  blood  kindling  into  flame.  But  even  then,  we 
could  not  fully  realize  that  they  were  indeed  our  enemies.  Our 
camps  were  closed  against  their  slaves.  Their  officers,  when 
captured,  were  treated  with  a  distinction  that  made  them  feel 
that  they  had  done  no  wrong,  and  dismissed  on  their  paroles  of 
honor,  although  they  had  been  guilty  of  a  base  desertion  of  our 
flag.  Their  men  were  fed  and  clothed,  and  afterward  exchanged 
as  prisoners  of  war.  And  for  much  of  this  feeling  they  were 
indebted  to  the  temper  of  the  President,  who  held  in  check  the 
impetuous  ardor  of  the  North,  and  incurred  the  risk  of  aliena- 


546  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

ting  his  most  steadfast  friends,  by  a  moderation  so  unusual  in 
stormy  times.  There  was  no  period,  indeed,  in  which  he  would 
not  have  opened  his  arms  to  receive  them  back,  without  humilia 
tion  to  themselves,  and  with  the  welcome  that  was  accorded  to 
the  repentant  and  returning  prodigal.  His  last  expressions  in 
regard  to  them  were  kind;  his  last  measures  intended  to  smooth 
the  way  for  their  return.  And  in  recompense  for  all  this,  'with 
wicked  hands  they  slew  him' — their  best  friend — just  when  his 
heart  was  overflowing  with  mercy  and  forgiveness  for  them 
selves.  He  had  not  learned — because  his  was  not  a  nature  to 
believe — that  no  kindness  could  soften  or  reclaim  the  leaders  of 
this  unholy  rebellion.  It  was  not  a  crime  only,  but  a  blunder  the 
most  serious  on  their  part.  Whether  actuated  by  private  malice, 
or  stimulated  by  public  ends,  there  was  no  time  at  which  the 
blow  that  struck  him  down  could  have  been  dealt  with  less 
advantage  to  their  cause,  and  so  little  personal  detriment  to  him. 
If  he  had  survived,  he  could  not,  in  the  course  of  nature,  have 
looked  for  many  years  of  life,  and  might  have  lived  to  disappoint 
the  expectations  of  his  friends,  in  what  would  probably  have 
proved  the  most  difficult  part  of  his  task,  by  a  policy  of  mercy 
that  would  have  brought  no  peace.  The  suppression  of  the 
rebellion  was  but  the  first  step  in  the  process  of  restoration. 
With  the  odds  so  largely  in  our  favor,  there  could  not  at  any 
time  have  existed  any  rational  doubt  as  to  the  result  of  the 
contest,  under  any  rational  direction.  It  was  not  so  much  the 
war,  as  the  peace  which  was  to  follow,  that  was  dreaded  by  the 
wise.  To  suppress  an  armed  rebellion  was  one  thing;  to  recon 
struct  a  government,  resting,  not  on  force,  but  on  co-operative 
wills,  was  another  and  a  higher  task.  The  one  called  only  for 
material  agents;  the  other  demanded  the  ripest  wisdom  of  the 
statesman.  The  sword  was  the  instrument  of  the  former;  a 
keener,  subtler,  and  mightier  instrument  was  required  for  the 
latter.  It  is  not  impossible  that  President  Lincoln,  with  all  his 
great  qualities,  might  have  failed  at  this  point.  If  stern  rigor 
and  exemplary  justice — if  the  confiscation  of  the  property,  or 
the  exile  or  disfranchisement  of  the  leaders  of  this  wicked  revolt, 
the  dark  assassins  of  our  peace — if  an  absolute  refusal  to  treat 
with  those  miscreants  at  all — were  essential  to  the  permanent 
restoration  of  peace  and  harmony  in  the  land — as  they  are 
believed  by  many  men  to  be — there  was  at  least  room  for  appre 
hension,  that  the  kind  and  gentle  spirit,  the  broad,  catholic 
charity  of  our  dead  President,  would  have  unfitted  him  for  the 
task.  It  was  a  remark  of  one  of  the  Greeks,  that  no  man  was 
happy,  or  sure  of  posthumous  renown,  until  the  grave  had  closed 
upon  him.  Abraham  Lincoln's  work  was  done,  and  done  sue- 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      547 

cessfully.  He  had  disappointed  nobody  in  the  Free  States, 
except  the  enemies  who  had  hoped  to  rob  him  of  the  glory,  and 
the  country  of  the  advantage  of  finishing  up  a  task,  which  they 
had  prematurely  denounced  as  a  failure.  He  is  now  beyond  the 
reach  of  censure,  or  unfriendly  criticism,  with  his  record  made 
up  for  history — honored  and  lamented  as  no  man  ever  was 
before  him ;  embalmed  in  the  heart  of  a  nation  that  has  followed 
him  to  his  tomb ;  doubly  endeared  to  them  by  the  cause  in  which 
he  died — by  his  death  as  well  as  by  his  life;  and  surrounded  by 
a  halo  that  has  invested  him  with  a  world-wide  fame.  Grieve 
not,  then,  for  him.  The  blow  that  took  him  from  our  arms  was 
but  his  passport  for  immortality.  The  nation  has  lost  a  Presi 
dent,  but  Abraham  Lincoln  has  won  an  imperishable  crown. 

"The  time  is  not  now  to  subject  the  minute  details  of  his 
administration  to  searching  criticism.  That  men  should  differ 
in  regard  to  this  or  the  other  measure  of  his  policy,  is  not 
unreasonable.  It  was  his  fortune,  as  might  have  been  expected 
of  a  cautious  man,  in  a  revolutionary  era,  to  find  himself  occa 
sionally  at  variance  with  his  friends,  as  well  as  with  his  enemies. 
If  he  was  sometimes  too  conservative  for  the  former,  he  was 
always  too  radical  for  the  latter,  and  was  sure,  therefore,  to 
secure  the  good  will  of  neither;  but  he  yielded  slowly  to  the 
indications  of  public  opinion — which  he  followed  only,  and  did 
not  lead — and  was  generally  sure  in  the  end  to  bring  the  extremes 
into  harmony,  by  disappointing  both,  and  to  find  the  public 
mind  prepared  to  approve  his  acts.  He  explored  his  ground  with 
care,  and  having  reached  his  conclusion  at  last  by  long  and 
patient  thought,  he  stood  upon  it  with  a  firmness  that  nothing 
could  shake.  With  him  there  was  no  step  backward.  Having 
once  planted  himself  on  the  ground  of  emancipation,  as  a  neces 
sity  of  state,  by  a  process  of  laborious  induction,  he  never  after 
ward  lost  sight  of  that  object,  and  never  faltered  in  the  execu 
tion  of  his  plans.  Adopted  only  as  a  means,  because  the  restora 
tion  of  the  Union  was  his  only  end,  it  became  at  last  so  far  an 
end,  that  he  refused  even  to  treat  for  that  restoration  upon  any 
other  condition  than  the  absolute  extinction  of  slavery,  to 
which  he  now  stood  pledged  before  the  world.  It  was  partly 
because  he  then  occupied  a  stand-point  that  opened  to  him  a 
wider  and  more  comprehensive  field  of  vision,  and  enabled  him 
to  see  that  the  Union  could  really  be  saved  upon  no  other 
terms  than  those  of  absolute  justice  to  the  black  man.  The 
public  mind  had  ripened  with  his  own  under  the  torrid  atmos 
phere  of  revolution.  The  acts  of  his  administration  are,  how 
ever,  to  be  estimated  in  the  light  of  the  exceeding  novelty,  and 
the  great  responsibilities  of  his  position.  It  is  no  fault  of  his, 


548  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

even  if  a  bolder  policy  might  have  resulted  in  earlier  success. 
Men  are  always  wise  after  the  fact,  but  in  his  position,  with  the 
fate  of  a  nation  in  his  hands,  there  was  no  place  for  rash 
experiments,  and  he  might  well  decline  to  take  the  risks,  which 
others,  without  responsibility  themselves,  might  have  insisted 
on,  in  opposition  to  the  opinions  of  advisers  who  were  supposed 
to  be  better  schooled  in  the  affairs  of  nations  than  himself. 

"And  yet  few  men  have  understood  the  people  better  than 
Abraham  Lincoln.  With  no  advantages  of  education  whatever, 
his  associations  had  been  more  with  men  than  books.  His 
thoughts  and  style  of  expression  all  bear  the  impress  of  that 
early  school.  His  ideas  flowed  in  the  same  channels  as  theirs. 
No  man  was  more  at  home  with  them,  or  better  understood 
the  art  of  winning  their  confidence,  just  because  they  recog 
nized  the  relationship,  and  felt  that  his  heart  pulsated  in 
unison  with  their  own.  His  mind  and  character  were  indeed 
the  natural  growth  of  our  free  institutions,  and  he  was  so 
eminently  a  representative  of  them,  that  no  other  country  could 
have  produced  his  counterpart.  A  higher  culture  would  only 
have  disguised  the  man,  by  paring  down  the  rough  edges,  and 
wearing  away  the  individuality  that  so  much  distinguished  him. 
Condemned  to  wrestle  with  poverty  from  the  outset,  he  was 
indebted,  no  doubt,  for  a  large  share  of  the  robust  vigor  of  his 
genius,  to  that  healthy  development  which  results  from  a  suc 
cessful  struggle  with  the  accidents  of  fortune.  Thus  educated, 
he  owed  nothing  of  his  success  in  life  to  the  cultivated  manners, 
or  the  bland  and  insinuating  address — the  ready  coin  of  society 
— which  the  people  are  so  often  willing  to  accept  as  substitutes 
for  learning  and  ability,  and  to  which  so  many  of  our  public 
men  are  indebted  for  their  personal  popularity,  and  their  great 
success  in  the  arena  of  politics.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a 
man  more  unsymmetrically  put  together,  or  more  essentially 
awkward  and  ungainly  in  his  personal  presence.  It  would  be 
still  more  difficult  to  find  a  man  so  free  from  all  pretension,  so 
plain,  and  simple,  and  artless  in  his  manner,  and  with  so  little 
apparent  consciousness  of  the  important  part  that  he  was  enact 
ing,  or  the  great  powrer  that  he  had  been  called  upon  to  wield. 
The  necessities  of  state  ceremonial — the  ordeal  of  a  public 
reception — were  obviously  the  things  that  he  most  dreaded  and 
disliked.  It  was  impossible  for  one  who  knew  him  well,  to  look 
upon  him  there,  or  in  a  scene  like  that  which  attended  his  last 
inauguration  at  the  Capitol,  surrounded  as  he  was  by  the 
ambassadors  of  all  the  crowned  heads  of  Christendom,  glittering 
in  the  gay  tinsel  and  the  heraldic  insignia  of  their  several 
orders,  with  a  thousand  bright  eyes  directed  from  the  galleries 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      549 

upon  that  unassuming  man — himself  the  central  figure  of  the 
group — without  feeling  that  he  was  under  a  constraint  of  posture 
that  did  violence  to  his  nature,  and  was  as  painful  as  it  was 
embarrassing.  The  expression  of  his  countenance,  on  such 
occasions,  was  one  of  sadness  and  abstraction  from  the  scene 
around  him — except  when  some  familiar  face  was  recognized, 
and  greeted  in  the  throng  that  crowded  to  take  him  by  the 
hand.  It  was  only  in  the  retirement  of  his  own  private  audience- 
chamber  that  the  whole  man  shone  out,  and  that  he  could  be 
said  to  be  truly  himself.  And  there,  with  a  perfect  abandon  of 
manner,  surrendering  himself,  without  constraint,  to  just  such 
posture,  however  grotesque  or  inelegant,  as  was  most  agreeable 
to  himself,  feeling  that  the  eye  of  the  world  was  no  longer  on 
him,  and  forgetting  that  he  was  the  ruler  of  a  mighty  nation, 
at  a  time  of  unexampled  anxiety  and  peril,  his  eye  and  lip  would 
light  up  with  an  expression  of  sweetness  that  was  ineffable, 
while  he  interested  and  amused  his  auditor,  by  the  ease  and 
freedom  of  his  conversation,  and  the  inexhaustible  fund  of 
anecdote  with  which  he  enriched  his  discourse,  and  so  aptly  and 
strikingly  illustrated  the  topics  that  he  discussed.  They  err 
greatly,  however,  who  suppose  in  him  any  undue  levity  of 
manner,  or  assign  to  him  the  credit  of  having  been  a  habitual 
joker.  If  he  told  a  story — and  it  was  perhaps  of  his  early  life 
and  experience — it  either  pointed  a  moral,  or  winged  a  thought 
to  the  mark  at  which  it  was  aimed — and  left  it  there.  He  was 
not  long  in  divining  the  true  characters  of  his  visitors,  and  if 
he  indulged  in  pleasantries,  it  was  either  to  gratify  their  tastes, 
or  to  parry  the  impertinences  to  which  he  was  so  frequently 
subjected.  Peculiarities  so  striking  as  those  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  are  always  singled  out  for  broad  caricature.  A  com 
mon  face  or  character  is  altogether  unfitted  for  the  purpose. 
But  like  many  men  who  have  acquired  a  reputation  for  sprightli- 
ness  and  humor,  the  cast  of  his  mind  was  deeply  serious.  With 
tne  grave  and  earnest,  who  came  to  discourse  with  him  on 
important  matters  of  state,  he  was  always  up  to  the  height 
of  that  great  argument;  and  there  are  few  men  living,  with  his 
imperfect  training,  and  so  little  acquaintance  with  books,  who 
can  express  their  thoughts  with  more  clearness,  or  force,  or 
propriety  of  speech,  than  himself.  He  talked  as  he  wrote,  and 
the  world  knows  with  what  originality,  and  precision,  and 
felicity  of  phrase — without  a  model  or  a  master — he  dealt  with 
the  many  perplexing  questions  that  were  presented  to  him.  His 
style  was  indeed  sni  generis.  Everything  he  wrote  has  the 
marks  of  its  paternity  so  strongly  impressed  upon  it,  that  the 
authorship  cannot  possibly  be  mistaken.  Nobody  could  imitate 


55O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

him;  'nobody  but  himself  could  be  his  parallel.'  He  had  much  of 
the  genius  of  Swift,  without  any  of  his  cynicism.  Without 
polish  or  elegance,  there  was,  however,  an  elevation  of  tone — 
a  vein  of  deep  faith,  and  of  high  religious  trust,  pervading  some 
of  his  state  papers,  and  especially  his  last  inaugural  address, 
that  have  placed  the  latter,  in  the  judgment  of  some  of  the  best 
European  scholars,  far  above  the  range  of  criticism. 

''But  his  crowning  attribute — the  one  that  won  for  him  so 
large  a  place  in  the  hearts  of  the  people — so  much  more  of  true 
affection  than  has  been  ever  inspired  by  the  exploits  of  the  suc 
cessful  warrior — was  the  large  humanity  that  dwelt  in  that  gen 
tle  bosom,  which  knew  no  resentments,  and  was  ever  open  to 
the  appeals  of  suffering.  No  feeling  of  vengeance  ever  found 
a  lodgment  there.  No  stormy  passion  ever  stirred  the  quiet 
depths,  or  swept  the  even  surface  of  his  tranquil  temperament. 
No  wife  or  mother,  who  had  begged  her  way  to  Washington, 
to  ask  the  pardon  of  an  erring  husband,  or  the  discharge  of  a 
wounded  or  dying  son,  was  ever  refused  an  audience,  or  ever 
retired  from  that  presence  without  invoking  Heaven's  choicest 
blessings  on  the  head  of  the  good  President,  who  could  refuse 
nothing  to  a  woman's  tears.  The  wives  and  mothers  of  America 
have  just  paid  back  the  tribute  of  their  overflowing  hearts, 
in  the  floods  of  sorrow  with  which  they  have  deluged  his  grave. 
If  he  had  a  weakness,  it  was  here,  but  it  was  such  a  weakness 
as  angels  might  confess,  and  history  will  not  care  to  extenuate. 
That  his  good  nature  was  sometimes  imposed  upon  is  not 
improbable.  For  times  and  places  such  as  his,  a  man  of  sterner 
mould  is  sometimes  absolutely  necessary.  It  is  greatly  to  be 
doubted  whether  that  gentle  heart  could  ever  have  been  per 
suaded  to  pronounce  the  deserved  doom  upon  the  guiltiest  of  the 
traitors.  The  crushing  appeal  of  the  wife  and  mother  would 
have  melted  down  his  stoicism,  like  wax  before  the  fire.  His 
last  Cabinet  conversation,  as  officially  reported  to  us,  was  full 
of  tenderness  and  charity  even  for  the  rebel  general  who  had 
abandoned  our  flag,  and  connived  at  the  butchery  of  our  prison 
ers.  The  word  was  scarcely  uttered,  before  the  gates  of  mercy 
were  closed  with  impetuous  recoil,  and  the  gentle  minister,  who 
would  have  flung  them  wide,  was  removed  forever,  to  give 
place  to  the  inexorable  judge.  The  awful  form  of  Justice  now 
appears  upon  the  scene,  to  deal  with  those  whom  mercy  could 
not  mollify,  while  a  world  does  homage  to  the  great  heart  that 
is  forever  at  rest. 

"Yes !  Abraham  Lincoln  rests.  'After  life's  fitful  fever  he 
sleeps  well.'  His  work  on  earth  is  done.  No  couch  of  roses, 
no  bed  of  luxurious  down  was  that  which  pillowed  his  aching 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN     551 

head,  during  the  four  eventful  years  of  his  public  ministry.  No 
doubt  his  worn  and  jaded  spirit  panted  for  repose.  He  must 
have  felt,  as  the  clouds  lifted  around  him,  and  the  horizon  of 
the  future  was  all  aglow  with  the  splendors  of  the  coming  day, 
that  he  was  about  to  enter  on  the  full  fruition  of  his  long 
cherished  hopes  of  a  ransomed  and  reunited  land.  He  had 
scaled  a  height,  from  which  the  eye  of  faith  might  sweep  the 
boundless  panorama  of  a  happy  continent,  lapt  in  the  repose 
of  universal  brotherhood — its  brown  forests  and  gold-bearing 
mountains  bathed  in  the  tranquil  sunshine,  and  sleeping  in  the 
quiet  solitude  of  nature — its  lakes  and  rivers  alive  with  the 
glancing  keels  of  an  abundant  and  industrious  commerce — its 
plains  dimpling  with  golden  harvests — and  the  tall  spires  of  its 
multitudinous  cities,  the  resorts  of  traffic,  and  the  homes  of 
learning  and  the  mechanic  arts,  pointing  to  the  skies.  But  it 
was  not  his  fate  to  enter  into  that  rest  which  such  a  vision  might 
have  foreshadowed.  Another  and  a,  more  enduring,  was  to 
receive  him  into  its  cold  embrace.  He  dies  unconscious — with 
out  warning,  and  without  a  struggle — in  the  very  hour  of  his 
triumph — in  no  darkened  chamber — tossed  by  no  agonies  on  an 
uneasy  couch — with  no  lamentations  and  no  wail  of  woe — no 
harrowing,  heart-breaking  farewells — to  disturb  his  spirit  in  its 
heavenward  flight;  but  by  an  unseen  hand — in  a  moment  of 
respite  from  corroding  care — and  in  the  presence  of  the  people 
whom  he  loved.  With  so  little  to  fear,  he  could  not  have  made 
a  happier  exodus.  How  marked  the  contrast  between  his  own 
last  hours,  and  the  last  of  the  public  life  of  the  rebel  chief, 
whose  wicked  counsels  have  either  inspired  the  blow,  or 
strengthened  the  hand  that  reached  his  life:  Abraham  Lincoln, 
who  never  injured  a  human  being,  dying  at  the  capital,  in  the 
hour  of  his  triumph,  with  no  rancor  in  his  heart,  and  nothing 
but  charity  and  forgiveness  for  his  enemies  upon  his  lips — and 
Jefferson  Davis,  with  the  blood  of  half  a  million  of  people  on 
his  hands,  flying  like  a  thief  in  the  night  through  the  swamps 
of  Georgia,  and  captured  in  the  disguise  of  a  woman,  without 
even  one  manly  effort  at  resistance !  It  had  been  better  for  his 
fame,  if  he  had  died  too,  even  as  he  had  lived.  The  genius  of 
Milton  almost  flags  under  the  sublime  story  of  the  flight  and 
fall  of  the  apostate  archangel,  when  conquered  but  not  dis 
mayed,  he  plunged  over  the  crystal  battlements  of  heaven,  'with 
hideous  ruin  and  combustion  down,'  till  startled  Chaos  shook 
through  his  wild  anarchy.  It  was  reserved  for  the  guilty  leader 
of  this  not  less  infamous  revolt,  to  find  even  a  lower  deep, 
where  the  dignity  of  the  epic  muse  can  never  reach  him. 


552  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"Rest  then,  honored  shade !  spirit  of  the  gentle  Lincoln, 
rest !  No  stain  of  innocent  blood  is  on  thy  hand.  No  widow's 
tear — no  orphan's  wail  shall  ever  trouble  thy  repose.  No  agoni 
zing  struggle,  between  the  conflicting  claims  of  mercy  and  of 
justice,  shall  afflict  thee  more.  Thou  hast  but  gone  to  swell  the 
long  procession  of  that  noble  army  of  martyrs,  who  left  their 
places  vacant  at  the  family  board,  to  perish  for  the  faith  in 
Southern  dungeons,  or  to  leave  their  bones  unburied,  or  ridge 
with  countless  graves  the  soil  that  they  have  won  and  watered 
with  their  blood.  Though  lost  to  us,  thou  are  not  lost  to  memory. 
The  benefactors  of  mankind  live  on  beyond  the  grave.  For  thee, 
death  ushers  in  the  life  that  will  not  die.  Thy  deeds  shall  not 
die  with  thee,  nor  the  cause  or  nation,  which  was  aimed  at  in 
the  mortal  blow  that  laid  thee  low.  What  though  no  sculptured 
column  shall  arise  to  mark  thy  sepulchre,  and  proclaim  to  future 
times  the  broad  humanity — the  true  nobility  of  soul — the  modera 
tion  in  success — that,  by  the  confession  of  his  harshest  critics, 
have  crowned  the  untutored  and  unpretending  child  of  the 
prairies,  as  the  'King  of  men?'  What  though  the  quiet  wood 
land  cemetery  that  shelters  thy  remains,  and  woos  the  pilgrim 
to  its  leafy  shades,  shall  show  no  costly  cenotaph — no  offerings 
save  those  which  the  hand  of  affection  plants,  or  that  of  nature 
sheds  upon  the  hallowed  mound  that  marks  thy  resting  place? 
What  though  the  muse  of  history,  who  registers  thy  acts,  and 
inscribes  thee  high  among  the  favored  few,  to  whom  God  has 
given  the  privilege  of  promoting  the  happiness  of  their  kind, 
should  fail  to  record  the  quiet  and  unobtrusive  virtues  that 
cluster  round  the  hearth  and  heart,  and  shrink  from  the  glare 
of  day?  There  is  a  chronicler  more  faithful,  that  will  take  thy 
story  up  where  history  may  leave  it.  The  pen  of  the  Recording 
Angel  will  write  it  in  the  chancery  of  Heaven,  while  the  lips 
of  childhood  will  be  taught  to  repeat  the  tragic  tale,  until  memory 
shall  mellow  into  the  golden  light  of  tradition,  and  poesy  shall 
claim  thy  story  for  its  theme.  But  long  ere  this — even  now  in 
our  own  day  and  generation — the  cotton  fields  and  the  rice 
swamps  of  the  South  will  be  vocal  with  thy  praise,  while  the 
voice  of  the  emancipated  white  man  shall  swell  the  choral  har 
mony  that  ascends  from  the  lips  of  the  dusky  child  of  the 
tropics,  as  he  lightens  his  daily  toil — now  sweet  because  no 
longer  unrequited — by  extemporizing  his  simple  gratitude  in 
unpremeditated  lays,  in  honor  of  the  good  President  who  died 
to  make  him  free.  The  mightiest  potentates  of  earth  have 
labored  vainly  to  secure  a  place  in  the  memories  and  the  regards 
of  men,  by  dazzling  exhibitions  of  their  power  to  enslave.  Both 
Memphian  and  Assyrian  kings,  whose  very  names  had  perished 


CONGRESSIONAL  SPEECHES  AND  EULOGY  ON  LINCOLN      553 

but  for  the  researches  of  the  learned,  have  sought  to  perpetuate 
their  deeds  and  glory  in  the  rock  tombs  of  the  Nile,  and  the 
unburied  bas-reliefs  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  covered  with  long 
trains  of  sorrowing  captives,  manacled  and  bound,  and  dragged 
along  to  swell  the  victors'  triumphs,  or,  perhaps,  as  votive  offer 
ings  to  the  temples  of  their  bestial  gods.  It  was  reserved  for 
thee  to  find  a  surer  road  to  fame,  by  no  parade  of  conquest.  No 
mournful  train  of  miserable  thralls  either  graces  or  degrades 
thy  triumph.  The  subjugated  are  made  free,  and  the  hereditary 
bondsman  drops  his  galling  chain,  and  feels  that  he  is  once  more 
a  man.  If  the  genius  of  sculpture  should  seek  to  preserve  thy 
name,  it  will  present  thee,  lifting  from  their  abject  posture,  and 
leading  by  the  hand,  with  gentle  solicitation,  the  enfranchised 
millions  of  a  subject  race,  and  laying  down  their  fetters,  as  a 
free-will  offering,  upon  the  altars  of  that  God  who  is  the  com 
mon  Father  of  mankind." 

This  ''eloquent  and  truthful  eulogy"  was  published  by 
the  leading  citizens  of  Pittsburgh,  and  Captain  Schenley 
of  London  had  it  reprinted  over  there  with  a  short  vindi 
cation  of  the  services  of  General  Meade.1  "I  read  the  last 
two  columns  (I  confess  it)  amidst  blinding  tears,"  wrote 
the  Hon.  Isaac  N.  Arnold,  one  of  Lincoln's  most  intimate 
and  trusted  advisers  and  author  of  a  posthumously  issued 
"Life  of  Lincoln."  "Your  eulogy  is  a  grand  lyric  to 
Liberty  and  Lincoln  and  the  closing  parts  of  it  among  the 
most  eloquent  things  I  ever  read."2 

1  Captain   Schenley's  letters  of  July  16  and  September  11,   1865,  among  the 
Williams  papers. 

2  Letter   of   Representative   Arnold  of    June   12,     1865,     from    Washington, 
among  the  Williams  papers.     He  says:  "I  am  trying  to  write  a  history  of  his 
administration  and  there  is  much  that  is   suggestive  in  what  you   say."     This 
developed   into  the  "Life,"   which   was  issued  after  his  death   by  Jansen,    Mc- 
Clurg  &  Co.  in  1885. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  THIRTY-NINTH  CONGRESS 
His    BRILLIANT    SPEECH    ON    "RECONSTRUCTION" 

His  TENURE-OF-OFFICE  BILL  DETERMINES  LINE  OF 
ATTACK  ON  PRESIDENT  JOHNSON 

1865 

Neither  the  American  people  nor  their  representatives 
were  in  a  very  conciliatory  mood  during  the  closing 
months  of  the  year  1865.  When  the  Thirty-ninth  Con 
gress  assembled  on  December  4th  Mr.  Williams  was 
among  those  returned,  and  he  was  retained  on  the  same 
committees;  indeed,  the  judiciary  committee,  as  a  whole, 
embraced  almost  the  same  membership  as  before.1  He 
took  a  more  active  part  in  all  that  came  before  the  House 
this  time,  almost  from  the  first,  and  so  early  as  February 
loth  (1866),  made  another  great  speech,  this  time  on 
"Reconstruction,"  and  it  serves  to  show  how  he  antici 
pated  its  questions  in  his  first  speech  on  this  subject, 
and  also  how  far  toward  the  position  he  then  took  the 
country  and  Congress  itself  had  moved.  It  also  shows  the 
first  premonitions  of  the  contest  that  was  to  rage  with 
such  bitterness  between  the  legislative  and  executive 
departments.2 

"Mr.  Speaker,"  he  began,  "nearly  two  years  ago,  and  while 
the  war  was  flagrant,  I  felt  it  my  duty  as  a  member  of  this  body 

1  Congressional  Globe,  Thirty-ninth  Congress,   ist  Session,   Part  i,  p.  21. 

2  Congressional   Globe,   Thirty-ninth   Congress,    ist   Session,    Part   i,   p.   784. 
The  congressional  executive  committee  valued  it  so  highly  that  after  the 

regular   issue   was   exhausted  they  ordered    100,000  more.     Letter  of   March   15, 
1866,  among  the  Williams  papers. 

Mr.  Williams  led  action  against  the  President's  course  early  in  the  ses 
sion  by  offering  two  resolutions,  one  directing  that  no  troops  should  be  re 
moved  from  the  South  without  the  direction  of  Congress  and  the  other 
directing  the  trial  of  Davis  and  Lee  by  a  military  commission.  Letter  of 
January  27,  1866. 

554 


PRESIDENT  ANDREW  JOHNSON 

Halftone  ot   a  contemporary  photograph  by  Brady,  negative  in  possession  of 
L.  C.   Handy,  Washington,  D.  C. 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         555 

to  look  into  the  question  of  the  relations  that  had  been  produced 
by  it,  the  privileges  that  have  been  forfeited  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  rights  and  powers  that  had  been  acquired  on  the  other,  with 
a  view  to  the  readjustment  of  the  whole  machine  by  the  resto 
ration  of  those  parts  that  had  been  sundered  from  it  by  the  dis 
turbance.  With  some — the  infirm  of  faith — the  inquiry  was 
thought  to  be  premature.  This,  however,  was  not  the  judgment 
of  the  last  Congress.  It  passed  a  bill  which  did  not  meet  the 
approval  of  the  Executive,  because  it  interfered  with  a  plan 
of  his  own  that  had  not  proved  acceptable  to  it,  and  the  question 
was  adjourned  without  advice  from  that  body,  and  in  such  a 
way  as  to  leave  the  field  open  for  experiments  with  which  it  was 
not  in  a  condition  to  interfere. 

"The  people  are  here  again  in  the  persons  of  their  repre 
sentatives,  who  are  the  law-making  power  of  the  nation,  not  on 
invitation,  but  by  constitutional  mandate,  to  inquire  what  has 
been  attempted,  and  to  decide  for  themselves  what  shall  be  done 
with  the  Territories  that  have  been  conquered  by  their  arms. 
It  is  agreed  on  all  hands  that  they  shall  be  eventually  readmitted 
as  members  of  the  common  family.  It  is  not  pretended  by  any 
body  that  they  can  resume  their  places  here  of  their  own  mere 
volition,  and  without  any  consent  of  ours.  It  is  not  insisted, 
I  think,  by  any  well-read  statesman,  that  our  power  to  exclude 
depends  only  on  our  right  to  determine  upon  the  qualifications  of 
our  own  members.  It  is  confessed  that  there  is  an  organic 
lesion  that  forbids  their  return,  and  can  only  be  supplied  by  a 
new  organization  which  no  act  of  spontaneous  generation  can 
produce.  It  will  scarcely  be  contended  now,  I  suppose,  as  it  was 
by  an  eccentric  committee  of  the  last  House,  that  our  victory 
was  crowned  only  with  a  lapse  of  sovereignty,  or  that  the  juris 
diction  to  restore  a  lost  member  is  anywhere  'but  here.  I  shall 
be  excused,  of  course,  for  returning  to  this  subject  under  circum 
stances  that  not  only  invite,  but  compel  its  discussion.  If  it  was 
not  proper  for  Congress  to  prescribe  in  advance  the  law  that 
was  to  govern  this  question  in  the  last  resort,  at  all  events, 
while  other  agencies,  mistaking  perhaps  its  backwardness  for 
an  abdication  of  its  rightful  powers,  were  industriously  employed 
in  forestalling  its  own  action,  it  is  no  longer  possible,  in  view 
of  what  has  occurred  since  the  last  adjournment,  and  of  the 
forces  that  have  been  mustered  to  overbear  our  deliberations 
here  to  avoid  a  conflict  that  has  been  so  long  foreshadowed. 

"To  determine  this  great  question,  the  greatest  by  far  that 
has  ever  challenged  the  deliberations  of  an  American  Congress, 
it  is  important  to  inquire,  in  the  first  place,  what  is  the  posture 
of  these  Territories,  as  it  has  been  affected  by  the  progress  and 


55^  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

results  of  the  war,  which  has  just  been  determined  by  their 
enforced  submission  to  the  authority  of  the  nation? 

"So  far,  at  least,  as  armed  resistance  is  concerned,  it  may 
be  assumed  that  the  war  is  at  an  end.  The  deluded  communities 
that  have  so  wantonly  insulted  this  Government  and  defied  its 
power,  now  lie  conquered,  and  helpless,  and  in  social  ruin  at  our 
feet,  deprived,  by  their  own  act — I  will  not  say,  in  the  language 
of  the  proclamations  that  have  been  addressed  to  them,  of  'all 
civil  government  whatever' — but  certainly  of  all  the  organism 
that  was  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  their  old  relations  to 
the  Union.  To  claim  any  more  than  this,  would  be  to  assume  a 
condition  of  anarchy,  where  there  is  still  a  'supreme  law'  under 
the  Constitution,  and  where,  even  in  the  absence  of  such  a  rule, 
the  territory  reclaimed  must  necessarily  pass  under  the  jurisdic 
tion  and  law  of  the  conqueror.  Taking  it,  however,  to  be  true, 
as  stated,  then,  by  necessary  inference,  the  civil  law  of  the  Union 
is  dethroned,  and  its  military  power  is  all  that  remains  to  hold 
these  States  in  subjection  to  our  authority.  In  point  of  fact,  we 
do  so  hold  them  now — except  so  far  as  they  have  been  sur 
rendered  to  the  enemy — without  other  law  than  our  own  sov 
ereign  will.  The  supreme  executive  functionary  of  this  nation, 
who,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  is  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  its 
armies,  feeling  that  they  were  not  in  a  condition  to  be  trusted 
to  themselves,  instead  of  sheathing  the  sword,  convoking  the 
representatives  of  the  people,  advising  them  that  these  provinces 
were  tranquillized,  and  submitting  to  them,  as  the  law-making 
power,  the  grave  question,  what  is  to  be  done  with  them?  has 
preferred  to  await  the  usual  period  of  our  assemblage,  and 
appointed  his  lieutenants  and  proconsuls  to  govern  them  in  the 
meanwhile,  with  the  aid  of  armies,  and  the  terrors  of  that 
arbitrary  code  which  is  known  by  the  name  of  martial  law. 
We  are  here  now,  however,  and  it  becomes  our  first  duty  to 
relieve  that  officer  from  this  unusual  and  inappropriate  task, 
and  to  furnish  some  security  to  the  conquered  people  by  the 
substitution  of  another  and  a  gentler  rule. 

"I  would  not  be  understood,  however,  as  questioning  the 
exercise  of  a  sovereignty  like  this,  so  long  as  it  was  necessitated 
by  the  absence  of  a  legislative  power,  since  that  is  but  a  logical 
consequence  of  the  position  previously  maintained  by  me  on 
this  floor,  that  these  States  had  ceased  to  be  members  of  the 
Union,  and  passed  into  the  condition  of  Territories.  If  they 
continued  to  be  States,  within  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution, 
the  moment  the  resistance  ceased  it  would  have  been  the  duty 
of  the  Executive  to  withdraw  the  armies,  and  they  would  have 
at  once  resumed  their  status  quo  ante,  with  all  their  constitu- 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         557 

tional  rights  and  privileges  unimpaired.  If  they  were  still 
States,  all  that  has  been  done  since,  even  though  the  power  of 
Congress  had  been  invoked  to  authorize  it,  would  have  been  the 
clearest  of  usurpations.  Taking  them,  however,  to  have  been 
'deprived,1  in  the  language  of  the  proclamations,  'of  all  civil 
government  whatever/  it  was  but  a  legitimate  inference  of  the 
Executive,  that  they  had  not  only  forfeited  their  elective  fran 
chise,  and  lost  their  property  in  slaves,  but  placed  themselves 
in  a  condition  where  they  were  no  longer  entitled  even  to  the 
benefit  of  the  constitutional  guaranty  without  a  new  birth. 
The  idea  of  any  State,  except  that  of  nature,  without  any  'civil 
government  whatever,'  is  as  incomprehensible  to  me  as  that  of 
a  State  being  in  the  Union,  or  indeed  anywhere,  that  is  admitted 
to  have  no  existence  whatever. 

"No  more  would  I  be  inclined  to  quarrel  with  those  who, 
starting  from  these  premises,  are  still  disposed  to  insist  that 
these  States  were  never  out.  The  difference  is  perhaps  only  the 
result  of  a  want  of  precision  in  the  use  of  terms,  or  a  diversity 
of  opinion  in  regard  to  their  meaning.  Mr.  Burke  has  furnished 
us  with  a  distinction  here  that  meets  the  case  precisely.  'The 
word  State,'  he  remarks  in  his  letter  to  Sir  Hercules  Langrishe. 
on  the  subject  of  the  extension  of  the  elective  franchise  to  the 
Irish  Catholics,  'is  one  of  much  ambiguity.  Sometimes  it  is 
used  to  signify  the  whole  commonwealth,  comprehending  all 
its  orders,  with  the  several  privileges  belonging  to  each.  Some 
times  it  signifies  only  the  higher,  and  ruling  part  of  the  com 
monwealth,  which  is  commonly  called  the  government.'  In  the 
former  of  these  senses,  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  these  com 
munities  still  exist,  and  are  in  the  Union,  or  of  the  Union, 
because  their  territories  belong  to  it,  and  their  people  owe  it 
allegiance.  In  the  latter,  however — and  that  is  the  one  that 
connects  them  with  our  political  system,  as  the  proclamations 
concede — they  are  admitted  by  the  same  proclamations  to  have 
been  destroyed,  and  can,  of  course,  be  nowhere.  And  this  will 
be  found  to  reconcile  the  apparent  contradiction  between  the 
language  of  the  proclamations,  and  the  accordant  practice  of  the 
Government  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  theory  of  those  who  are 
supposed  to  speak  its  opinions,  and  infer  from  some  unhappy 
phraseology  of  the  former,  as  well  as  from  the  more  recent 
utterances  of  the  message,  the  repugnant  idea  that  there  was  a 
constitution  of  government  left  existing  amid  the  general  wreck, 
in  a  case  where  it  had  been  previously  declared  in  terms  that 
there  was  'no  civil  government  whatever/ 

"There  can  be  no  real  dispute,  therefore,  between  the 
Executive  and  his  northern  friends  as  to  the  posture  of  these 


558  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

dilapidated  members.  Their  entire  treatment  by  him  shows  that 
they  have  only  been  regarded  practically  as  conquered  provinces. 
I  deprecate,  however,  the  encouragement  that  has  been  given 
to  the  enemies  of  the  Government,  by  the  promulgation  of  the 
fallacious  doctrine,  which  has  found  so  ready  a  currency  among 
the  disaffected  of  the  North,  and  has  proved  so  welcome  to  the 
unrepentant  rebels  of  the  South,  that  these  disorganized  States 
have  never  ceased  to  be  members  of  the  Federal  Union.  That 
is  the  present  theory  of  every  traitor,  North  or  South,  who  has 
been  insisting  for  four  long  years  of  war  on  the  right,  as  well 
as  the  fact  of  secession.  With  strong  assurances  of  pardon, 
they  can  well  afford  to  risk  the  consequences  of  treason,  by 
repudiating  the  belligerency  upon  which  they  have  heretofore 
claimed  immunity  for  their  crime,  if  it  will  restore  them  to  their 
original  rights,  and  serve  them  as  an  argument  against  the 
legality  of  the  proclamation  that  has  stripped  them  of  their 
property  in  slaves.  Grant  them  the  postulate  that  all  their  acts 
of  secession  were  not  a  fact,  but  a  nullity — that  the  crime  which 
they  committed  was  impossible,  because  it  was  forbidden — and 
if  they  cannot  invalidate  the  war,  and  the  debt  that  was  made 
by  it,  they  will  at  least  stagger  your  courts  with  the  question, 
by  what  authority  under  the  Constitution,  you  have  presumed 
to  deprive  the  people  of  a  State  within  the  Union,  by  procla 
mation  and  without  judgment  of  law,  of  any  of  their  franchises 
or  property.  They  will  admit  it  now  ss  an  incident  of  the  war 
— if  there  was  a  war,  or  could  be,  where  there  was  no  secession, 
and  therefore  no  belligerent — so  far  as  the  thing  was  consum 
mated  by  an  actual  seizure,  just  as  they  are  now  ready  to  con 
fess  that  the  right  of  secession  has  been  disproved  by  the  logic 
of  the  sword — which  means  only  by  their  present  inability  to 
maintain  it  by  that  argument — while  their  northern  brethren 
still  assert  the  very  heresy  upon  which  it  rests.  But  once  in, 
they  will  take  you  at  your  word,  and  insist  that  all  your  inter 
mediate  acts  were  nullities  as  well  as  theirs. 

"Agreeing,  however,  as  we  all  do,  that  these  States,  without 
any  local  law  or  governments  of  their  own,  have  passed  under 
the  law  of  the  conqueror — and  the  attempt  to  reorganize  them  by 
Federal  authority  is  an  admission  of  it — the  next  question,  into 
the  discussion  of  which  we  are  now  prematurely  hurried,,  is 
not  how  they  are  to  be  governed  until  they  shall  be  in  a  condi 
tion  to  return — because  that  seems  to  have  been  assumed  to  be 
no  business  of  ours — but  whether  that  condition  has  been 
reached,  and  what  are  to  be  the  agencies  and  terms,  through 
and  upon  which  this  consummation  is  to  be  effected. 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         559 

"If  there  be  any  one  question  that  more  than  another  falls 
within  the  exclusive  cognizance  of  the  people  of  the  loyal  States, 
and  deserves  and  demands  the  thoughtful  consideration  of  their 
Representatives,  it  is  just  this.  Eleven  of  the  columnar  sup 
ports  of  our  political  edifice  are  now  lying  around  us,  like  the 
giant  columns  of  Tadmor  and  Palmyra,  with  shaft,  and  capital, 
and  architrave  alike  shattered  by  the  mighty  convulsion  that  has 
laid  them  all  in  ruins.  Where  is  the  hand  that  is  to  lift  these 
columns  to  their  place?  Who  is  it  that  shall  reunite  the  dis 
severed  fragments,  and  wreathe  the  ivy  over  the  towers  that  have 
been  rent  from  turret  to  foundation  ?  What  are  to  be  the  proc 
ess  and  the  conditions,  on  which  these  great  criminals,  who. 
'like  the  base  Judean,'  have  wantonly  flung  away  'a  pearl  richer 
than  all  their  tribe,'  are  to  be  readmitted  into  the  enjoyment  of 
the  privileges  they  have  rejected  and  despised,  and  received  again 
into  the  fellowship  of  the  men  they  hated,  and  the  confidence 
and  honors  of  the  Government  they  have  only  failed  to  destroy, 
because  it  has  proved  too  strong  even  for  a  degree  of  treachery 
that  has  no  parallel  in  history  ?  How  far  are  these  baffled  parri 
cides  to  be  trusted  again,  now  that  they  are  vanquished,  and 
without  power  of  resistance,  after  such  an  experience,  after  so 
bloody  a  lesson  as  they  have  taught  us — and  what  are  the  guards 
that  will  be  required  to  prevent  a  recurrence  of  any  of  the  evils 
from  which  we  have  just  escaped?  All  these  are  problems 
W7hich,  however  simple  they  may  have  been  considered  in  some 
quarters,  might  well  embarrass  the  profoundest  of  our  statesmen, 
and  which  all  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  nation  will  not  be 
more  than  sufficient  to  solve.  The  war  itself,  stupendous  as  it 
has  proved,  was  nothing  in  the  comparison.  There  never  was  a 
reasonable  doubt  as  to  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion,  provided 
the  loyal  States  should  prove  true  to  themselves.  It  was  a  purely 
arithmetical  problem,  of  which  the  elements  were  within  the 
reach  of  everybody.  If  all  the  slave  States  had  been  united, 
eighteen  millions  of  the  northern  freemen,  with  the  credit,  and 
resources,  and  prestige  of  this  great  Government  on  their  side, 
and  man  for  man  the  peers  of  their  enemy,  were  sure  to  subdue 
less  than  one  half  their  number,  with  four  millions  of  a  disaf 
fected  population  in  their  midst,  as  soon  as  they  were  allowed 
to  strike  at  the  heart  of  the  rebellion,  and  it  came  to  be  under 
stood  that  it  was  to  be  a  war  a  I'outrance.  The  only  real  danger 
was  in  the  prospective  and  inevitable  process  of  reconstruction. 
It  was  a  question  only  whether  there  would  be  wisdom  enough 
in  the  councils  of  the  nation  to  profit,  by  the  heroism  of  our 
soldiers  in  the  field,  or  folly  enough  to  throw  away  the 
fruits  of  the  many  sacrifices  that  this  long  and  bloody 


560  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

war  had  cost  us,  by  ignoring  our  past  experience,  and 
rushing  with  headlong  precipitation,  and  immature  resolve,  into 
measures  of  restoration,  resting  on  no  system  or  principle,  and 
reserving  no  guarantees  for  the  future.  We  have  just  reached 
that  point.  The  rebellion,  so  far,  at  all  events,  as  armed  resist 
ance  is  concerned,  is  over.  We  still  tread,  however,  on  the 
ashes  of  an  unextinguished  volcano — 'supposito  cinerc  doloso' 
'An  earthquake's  spoils  are  sepulchered  below.'  The  ground  still 
heaves  and  trembles;  the  fiery  flood  still  surges  and  pulsates 
beneath  our  feet;  and  already,  almost  before  the  thunders  of 
our  artillery  have  rolled  into  the  distance,  and  while  the  smoke 
of  battle  is  still  upon  the  plain — without  a  moment's  pause  to 
survey  the  wide  field  of  ruin,  and  reach  forward,  if  possible, 
with  telescopic  vision  into  all  the  bearings,  and  all  the  remotest 
possible  consequences  of  the  act  which  we  are  called  upon  to 
do — a  childish  impatience  is  urging  us  upon  a  path  where  angels 
might  fear  to  tread,  and  expecting  us  to  crowd  the  structure  of 
an  empire — the  ordinary  work  of  centuries — into  the  delibera 
tions  of  an  hour. 

"Upon  considerations  such  as  these,  I  would  have  preferred 
to  wait  until  the  two  Houses,  acting  in  their  legislative  capacities, 
and  in  the  spirit  of  statesmen  who  are  charged  with  the  interests 
of  half  a  continent,  had  matured  some  plan  which  would  secure 
uniformity  in  our  proceedings  here,  while  it  furnished  to  the 
whole  country — to  the  loyal  people  of  the  returning  States,  as 
well  as  to  ourselves — all  the  safeguards  which  the  circumstances 
of  the  case  required.  My  judgment  is  that  you  can  proceed 
lawfully  in  no  other  way.  If  restoration  is  the  object;  if  these 
State  governments  have  been  destroyed  and  must  be  organized 
anew;  if  the  people  of  these  States  must  be  enabled  to  restore 
them  to  their  old  relations,  and  put  them  in  a  way  to  entitle  them 
to  claim  the  benefits  of  the  constitutional  guaranty  through  the 
agency  of  the  Federal  authorities;  if  they  must  be  readmitted; 
if  the  guaranty  is  to  be  fulfilled — all  which  things  are  conceded 
by  the  proclamations — then  it  is  as  clear  as  sunlight  that  nothing 
short  of  an  act  of  Congress — a  law  in  all  its  constitutional 
forms  can  accomplish  this  work.  But  I  am  in  no  hurry  even 
as  to  this.  Festina  lente  is  the  motto  for  a  statesman.  States 
are  of  slow  growth.  A  century  is  but  a  day  in  the  life  of  a 
nation.  The  great  poet  has  said — 

"  'A  thousand  years  scarce  serve  to  form  a  State; 
An  hour  may  lay  it  in  the  dust.' 

"To  heal  the  wounds  inflicted  by  a  four  years'  civil  war  is 
not  the  work  of  a  day.  If  we  would  do  it  well,  we  must  imitate 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         561 

the  processes  of  nature,  beginning  at  the  bottom  and  working 
slowly  to  the  surface.  Sound  statesmanship  would  declare  in 
favor  of  this  course  in  any  case.  It  would  tolerate  no  other 
where  there  is  so  little  excuse  for  precipitancy,  where  there  is 
no  real  pressure  except  that  which  is  invited  by  ourselves,  and 
where  a  mistake  once  made,  however  disastrous  in  its  effects, 
would  be  absolutely  irremediable.  That  privilege  is,  however, 
denied  to  us.  Though  we  had  declined  to  court  this  issue  by 
going  out  to  meet  it,  it  has  come  to  seek  us  here,  and  if  we  have 
not  been  allowed  to  provide  by  law,  in  advance  of  the  occasion, 
a  rule  which  shall  govern  all  cases,  we  must  at  least  meet  it  in 
the  more  questionable  shape  in  which  it  presents  itself,  though 
under  disadvantages  not  unlike  those  we  had  to  encounter  with 
the  same  parties  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 

"The  present  Executive  of  the  nation,  acting  upon  the  preva 
lent  idea  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Government  to  take  the 
initiative  step  in  the  process  of  restoration,  instead  of  awaiting 
any  spontaneous  action,  or  the  expression  of  any  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  people  of  the  rebel  States  to  return  to  their  original 
relations  in  the  Union — which  could  be  only  properly  con 
veyed  by  an  appeal  to  Congress — has,  in  the  recess  of  this  body, 
and  on  the  cessation  of  active  hostilities  in  these  States,  con 
cluded  it  to  be  his  duty  to  direct  their  organization,  along  with 
the  process  by  which  it  is  to  be  effected,  in  order  to  entitle  them 
to  the  benefit  of  the  constitutional  guaranty,  and  has  accordingly 
indicated  his  plan  in  a  series  of  proclamations,  which  are  all 
of  the  like  tenor,  though  differing  in  some  respects  from  the 
plan  of  his  predecessor.  The  presumption  was  that  they  would 
in  all  instances  conform  to  the  law  that  he  had  prescribed  for 
them.  Having  so  complied,  they  would  naturally  expect  that 
their  immediate  lawgiver,  although  then  understood  to  admit 
the  ultimate  decision  to  rest  with  Congress  alone,  would  recom 
mend  their  admission,  and  enforce  that  recommendation  with 
all  the  influence  that  he  could  lawfully  exert.  It  becomes 
important,  therefore,  to  look  into  that  process,  and  ascertain 
whether  it  was  consistent  with  the  spirit  of  our  institutions; 
whether  it  rested  on  any  correct  view  of  the  relations  with 
which  it  had  to  deal;  and  how  far  it  was  calculated  to  secure 
the  object  for  which  it  was  professedly  contrived. 

"A  careful  analysis  of  these  instruments  will  be  found  to 
result  in  the  development  of  the  following  leading  propositions: 

"i.  They  admit  the  continuing  existence  of  a  state  of  war, 
and  profess  to  rest  in  the  two-fold  authority  of  the  President,  as 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United 


562  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

States,  as  well  as  supreme  civil  executive  magistrate  of  the 
Union. 

"2.  They  declare  the  people  of  these  States  to  have  been 
deprived  by  their  own  acts  of  all  civil  government  whatever. 

"3.  They  confess  the  necessity  of  a  new  organization,  for 
the  purpose  of  restoring  their  constitutional  relations  with  the 
Federal  Government,  and  presenting  such  form  of  government 
as  will  entitle  them  to  the  benefit  of  its  guaranties,  and  therein 
admit  that  they  are  not  so  entitled  in  their  present  condition. 

"4.  They  concede  that  the  new  organization  must  receive 
its  impulse  and  direction  from  without,  and  be  assisted  by  the 
co-operative  action  of  the  Federal  authorities. 

"5.  Confessing,  however,  that  these  States  are  not  now  enti 
tled  to  the  benefit  of  the  constitutional  guaranty,  they  assert,  in 
effect,  that  under  it,  the  Federal  Government  is  bound  to  place 
them  in  a  position  which  will  enable  them  to  claim  it,  and  assume 
that  the  fulfillment  of  that  guaranty  is  a  purely  executive  func 
tion,  to  be  performed  in  such  a  way  as  the  judgment  of  the 
President  may  determine. 

"6.  They  direct,  accordingly,  the  assemblage  of  conventions 
at  the  earliest  practicable  day,  and  define  and  ascertain  the 
qualifications  of  the  voters. 

"7.  In  fixing  those  qualifications  they  adopt  a  standard  that 
is  entirely  new,  by  limiting  the  franchise,  not  to  the  white  men 
generally,  but  to  such  only  of  the  people  who  were  invested  with 
that  prerogative  under  the  government  that  is  admitted  to  have 
been  destroyed,  as  are  loyal,  and  will  swear  to  support,  not  the 
Constitution  only,  but  all  laws  and  proclamations  during  the 
rebellion  having  reference  to  the  emancipation  of  slaves. 

"8.  Admitting,  moreover,  that  these  States  are  without  any 
civil  government  whatever,  and  that  they  must  necessarily 
organize  anew,  they  insist  that  it  shall  be  done  upon  the  partial 
recognition  of  a  government  that  has  been  destroyed,  by  a  proc 
ess,  not  of  organization  at  all,  but  of  amendment  and  alteration 
only,  that  shall  work  simply  on  that  part  of  the  defunct  corpus 
which  was  left  untouched  by  the  ordinances  of  secession,  and 
whose  continued  existence  would  involve  a  denial  of  the  right 
of  Federal  interference,  and  is  in  direct  contradiction  of  the 
premises  on  which  these  proclamations  rest. 

"9.  They  look,  moreover,  to  the  employment  of  the  military 
arm  in  the  execution  and  enforcement  of  the  scheme  of  restora 
tion  which  they  involve. 

"With  all  proper  respect  for  the  Executive,  I  am  con 
strained  to  say  that  there  are  evidences  here,  either  that  these 
proclamations  could  not  have  been  considered  or  digested  with 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         563 

the  care  which  so  great  an  occasion  would  seem  to  have 
demanded,  or  that  the  case  might  not  unprofitably  have  been 
transferred  from  the  other  end  of  the  Avenue,  to  its  appropriate 
forum  in  the  great  council  of  the  nation,  assembled  here  to 
deliberate  upon  its  interests,  and  vested  exclusively  with  the 
high  power  of  legislating  in  regard  to  its  Territories,  of  admit 
ting  new  States,  and  of  fulfilling  all  constitutional  guarantees. 
My  reasons  for  so  thinking  will,  however,  be  better  understood 
from  the  remarks  I  have  to  offer  on  the  several  propositions 
which  I  have  extracted  from  them. 

"It  may  be  safely  affirmed,  I  think,  that  the  existence  of  a 
state  of  war,  whether  that  war  be  openly  aggressive  and  demon 
strative  in  its  character,  or  exhibiting  itself  only  in  sullen  dis 
content,  or  disaffection,  or  hatred  of  the  Government,  such  as 
to  necessitate  the  presence  of  a  military  force  to  compel  obedi 
ence  to  the  national  authority,  or  to  prevent  a  seizure  of  the 
local  power,  is  utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  idea  of  such  an 
organization,  as  the  genius  of  our  institutions,  and  the  very 
texture  of  our  Government  would  demand.  Without  the  spon 
taneous  and  unrestrained  volition  of  the  majority  of  the  people, 
I  cannot  conceive  the  idea  of  the  existence,  or  constitution  of  a 
republican  State.  A  form  of  government  erected  by  or  for  a 
minority  of  the  people,  and  depending  upon  armies  for  its 
existence  or  support,  would  be  the  merest  mockery  of  a  repub 
lic,  and  could  not  be  recognized  here  consistently  with  the  terms 
of  the  constitutional  guaranty.  It  is  a  self-evident  proposition 
that  so  long  as  it  requires  an  army,  or  a  Federal  legate — whether 
called  by  the  name  of  provisional  governor,  lieutenant,  comman 
dant,  proconsul,  or  pretorian  prefect — to  govern  it,  it  is  not  in 
a  condition  to  perform  that  task  itself ;  and  the  very  appointment, 
which  would  be  otherwise  unlawful,  is  a  confession  of  it.  While 
the  Executive  holds  the  Territory  within  his  grasp  as  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  of  our  armies,  he  holds  it  under  military  law — 
which  is  the  only  law  he  can  administer — and  by  a  power  that 
is  absolute;  and  it  is  idle  to  talk  about  the  restoration  of  the 
civil  authority  by  the  voluntary  act  of  the  people  themselves, 
because  he  is  essentially  supreme.  The  power  he  wields  is 
above  the  law,  and  silences  the  law.  There  can  be  no  two 
codes — no  divided  imperium  here.  The  man  who  so  rules  is 
essentially  a  dictator;  and  it  makes  no  difference  in  principle 
whether  he  prescribes  the  law  for  a  good  purpose,  or  a  bad 
one.  It  is  impossible  that  the  people  should  act  freely  under 
such  a  domination.  It  is  only  when  it  ceases  that  they  can 
truly  be  regarded  as  their  own  masters.  The  jealousy  of  our 
fathers  has  guarded  against  the  very  presence  of  the  military 


564  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

on  the  election  ground,  even  where  the  civil  law  reigned,  and  the 
subordination  of  the  military  was  unquestioned.  Where  it 
knows  no  law,  however,  except  its  own  will,  and  stands  by  to 
direct  and  execute  that  will,  the  acts  done,  which  would  be 
clearly  invalidated  thereby  in  the  States,  are  its  own.  If  it 
assembles  conventions  and  names  the  voters,  they  are  its 
creatures.  If  it  elects  Congressmen,  they  represent  it  only.  If 
the  product  of  its  imperial  rescript  is  a  republic  in  form,  it  is 
a  republic  engendered  from  the  decomposing  remains  of  the 
dead  sovereignty,  under  the  fierce  embrace  of  the  military 
power — a  republic  hatched  into  life  by  the  spirit  of  despotism 
brooding  over  a  chaos  of  ruin.  To  say  that  a  monstrous  birth 
like  this,  tearing  its  way  through  the  entrails  of  the  State — a 
delivery  by  the  sword — assisted  by  the  matronly  offices  of  a 
provisional  governor,  and  graced  by  a  more  than  royal  attend 
ance  in  the  high  functionaries  of  State,  'the  military  comman 
dant  of  the  department,  and  all  officers  and  persons  in  the  military 
and  naval  service,'  who  are  expressly  summoned  to  be  present 
on  the  august  occasion — is  the  legitimate  offspring  of  a  free 
people,  or  has  any  of  the  features  of  a  republic  within  the 
meaning  of  the  Constitution,  is  to  draw  largely  on  the  imagina 
tion.  Freedom  recoils  aghast  at  such  an  apparition,  and 
shrieks  out  'death  !'  Nor  will  it  be  sufficient  to  assert  that  these 
sword-bearers  were  not  actually  present  in  the  body,  and  that 
therefore  no  control  was  exercised  over  these  provincial 
councils  by  their  creator  and  lawgiver.  We  know  that  when 
the  fiat  went  forth  publicly  to  the  hesitating  synod  of  North 
Carolina,  that  the  debt  of  the  rebellion  must  be  repudiated,  every 
knee  went  down  in  humble  submission  to  the  orders  of  the 
Commander-in-Chief.  We  know,  too,  from  the  very  recent 
message  of  the  rebel  general  and  Governor  of  Mississippi, 
(Humphreys,)  who  was  pardoned  specially  to  qualify  him  for 
the  place,  that  it  was  'under  the  pressure  of  Federal  bayonets' 
that  the  people  of  that  State  'have  abolished  the  institution  of 
slavery;'  and  it  is  not  uncharitable  to  infer  that  the  members  of 
all  those  bodies  knew  precisely  how  much  would  be  expected  of 
them,  and  were  prepared  to  do  the  will  of  the  Executive,  even 
though  it  had  extended  to  suffrage  for  the  black  man.  Dis 
guise  it  as  we  may,  these  so-called  constitutions  of  government 
are  but  articles  of  capitulation  after  the  fact;  treaties  between 
that  officer,  dealing  with  these  questions  as  an  absolute  sover 
eign,  and  the  chiefs  of  the  rebellion;  terms  dictated  by  the 
President  as  a  conqueror,  in  accordance  with  his  own  individual 
and  imperial  will;  agreements  reluctantly  conceded  by  them,  as 
the  condition  not  only  of  pardon,  but  of  restoration  to  power, 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         565 

but  almost  invariably  repudiated  by  their  followers,  in  the 
refusal  to  ratify  them  by  sending  men  here  who  were  qualified 
under  the  law  of  Congress  to  take  their  places  amongst  us. 
That  they  are  so  considered,  even  by  themselves,  is  shown  by 
the  recent  correspondence  between  the  high  contracting  powers, 
represented  by  our  Minister  of  Foreign  Relations  on  the  one 
hand  and  Governor  Orr  of  South  Carolina  on  the  other,  in 
which  it  is  declared  by  the  latter  that  the  State  convention, 
which  he  admits  to  be  a  revolutionary  body,  had  been  dissolved 
'after  having  done  all  that  the  President  requested  to  be  done.'  It 
is  shown,  too,  more  strongly,  in  the  letter  of  the  rebel  General 
Hampton  to  the  people  of  South  Carolina,  declining  to  be  a 
candidate  for  Governor,  on  the  ground  that  it  might  embarrass 
the  Executive  in  his  benevolent  designs  in  favor  of  the  South. 
Though  not  approving  all  that  was  conceded  by  the  convention, 
he  recommends  their  acquiescence  in  what  he  treats  as  the 
demands  of  the  conqueror,  on  the  ground  of  necessity,  and  for 
the  special  reason  that  the  President  'had  exhibited  a  strong 
disposition  not  only  to  protect  the  South  from  the  radicalism  of 
the  North,  but  to  reinstate  them  in  their  civil  and  political  rights.' 
'It  may  be  assumed/  he  adds,  'that  when  the  forms  of  government 
are  restored,  and  freedom  of  speech  allowed  to  us,  your  late  con 
vention  will  be  subjected  to  harsh  criticism,  and  its  action 
impugned.  Should  such  unhappily  be  the  case,  remember  that 
you,  the  people  of  South  Carolina,  accepted  the  convention  as  part 
and  parcel  of  the  terms  of  your  surrender.  The  President  had  no 
shadow  of  authority,  I  admit,  under  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  to  order  a  convention  in  this  or  any  other 
State ;  but  as  a  conqueror  he  had  the  right  to  offer,  if  not  to 
dictate,  terms.  The  terms  offered  by  him  you  have  accepted.  I 
do  not  myself  fully  concur  in  all  the  measures  adopted  by  the 
convention,  but  I  shall  cheerfully  acquiesce  in  the  action  it  took 
to  carry  out  faithfully  the  terms  agreed  on.  Entertaining  these 
views,  I  think  it  our  duty  to  sustain  the  President  of  the  United 
States  so  long  as  he  manifests  a  disposition  to  restore  all  our 
rights  as  a  sovereign  State.  Above  all,  let  us  stand  by  our 
State.  Her  record  is  honorable,  her  escutcheon  untarnished.' 
When  a  man  like  Hampton  speaks  of  'the  radicalism  of  the 
North,'  we  know  that  he  intends  the  Union  party  of  the  free 
States,  who  favored  the  prosecution  of  the  war  and  elected  the 
President  himself,  and  the  men  whom  they  have  sent  here  to 
declare  their  will ;  and  it  is  on  the  disposition  of  the  President 
to  protect  them  from  his  own  friends  in  the  country,  and  in  these 
Halls — the  feeling  that  they  could  make  a  better  bargain  with 
him,  and  were  safer  in  his  hands  than  in  those  of  the  people 


566  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

and  their  Congress — that,  without  one  word  in  favor  of  the 
Union,  but  with  an  earnest  invocation  to  the  people  to  stand, 
above  all  things,  by  their  own  honorable  and  untarnished  State, 
he  urges  them  to  support,  not  the  Union,  but  the  President,  and 
him  only  'so  long  as  he  manifests  a  disposition  to  restore  all 
their  rights  as  a  sovereign  State,'  including,  of  course,  the 
transcendent  and  inalienable  right  of  secession.  And  the 
Executive  responds  to  this  presentation  of  the  case,  by  inform 
ing  us  in  his  late  message  that  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
t*erms  of  settlement,  while  the  gentleman  from  New  York,  [Mr. 
RAYMOND,]  who  is  supposed  to  reflect  his  opinions,  is  candid 
enough  to  put  his  vindication  of  the  special  requirements  of  that 
functionary  on  the  same  grounds,  and  in  language  almost  identi 
cal  with  that  of  the  traitor  Hampton.  It  is  a  waste  of  time, 
however,  to  labor  a  point  like  this.  If  the  orders  of  the  Com 
manding  General,  as  enunciated  through  the  proclamations 
themselves,  were  in  point  of  fact  obeyed,  it  is  sufficient  for  the 
purposes  of  this  argument.  To  deny  his  control  over  the 
creatures  of  his  own  will,  because  his  subordinates  did  not 
stand  over  their  deliberations  with  a  drawn  sword,  would  be 
the  merest  of  subterfuges.  As  well  might  it  be  said  that  the 
Maker  of  all  things,  who  launched  the  circumambient  orbs 
through  the  immensity  of  space,  and  prescribed  the  law  of 
gravitation  for  their  government,  was  exercising  no  control, 
because  He  was  not  on  sleepless  watch  at  the  center  of  the 
system,  and  telegraphing  his  special  orders  to  Neptune  and 
Uranus,  by  way  of  keeping  them  on  the  track  as  they  sped  their 
unerring  way  through  the  mazy  labyrinth  of  the  stellar  worlds. 
"It  will  be  urged,  however,  as  it  has  been,  that  this  was  a 
measure  of  peace;  an  instrumentality  essential  to  the  tranquilli- 
zation  of  those  States ;  a  part  of  the  process  for  the  restora 
tion  of  order  that  must  precede  the  withdrawal  of  the 
national  authority,  and  would  enable  the  loyal  people  there 
to  dispense  with  the  further  presence  of  its  armies.  The  answer 
is,  that  if  it  was  intended  to  place  the  reins  in  the  hands  of  the 
loyal  minority  of  white  men,  while  it  confesses  a  condition  of 
things  where  a  republic  is  impracticable,  and  c,n  election  would 
be  an  absurdity,  it  could  insure  no  peace  and  no  permanent 
ascendency  to  that  element,  without  continued  protection, 
because  it  required  a  military  power  to  inaugurate  it — just  as 
is  now  admitted  by  Governor  Brownlow  to  be  the  case  in  Ten 
nessee;  and  if  it  was  intended  merely  to  restore  the  disloyal 
majority  who  governed  before  the  rebellion,  and  hurried  these 
States  into  it,  then  it  was  unnecessary.  The  idea  is,  in  plain  Eng 
lish,  if  not  to  make  them  our  masters,  at  least  to  free  them  from 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         567 

our  authority  in  the  first  place,  in  the  hope  that  it  will  secure 
peace  and  submission  in  the  future.  I  cannot  consent  to  any 
such  arrangement.  I  do  not  comprehend  the  value  of  that  tran 
quillity  which  is  only  to  be  purchased  by  the  abdication  of  our 
power,  whether  it  be  by  the  withdrawal  of  our  troops,  the  res 
toration  to  the  enemy  of  the  arms  that  he  was  compelled  to 
lay  down  on  the  last  of  his  battle-fields,  or  the  invitation — I 
should  rather  say  command — to  him  to  share  our  counsels  in 
the  adjustment  of  the  results  and  the  responsibilities  of  the 
war.  If  this  be  peace,  it  might  have  been  secured  at  any 
time,  with  only  the  waiver  of  our  right  to  insist  that  they 
shall  sit  down  on  the  judgment  seat,  and  divide  the  empire  with 
us.  It  may  be  secured  now  by  allowing  them  to  resume  their 
power  and  places  here,  upon  the  cheap  consideration  of  a  tem 
porary  acknowledgment  that  the  negro  is  no  longer  an  article 
of  merchandise,  because  all  their  chances  of  success  in  this 
rebellion  now  depend  on  a  change  of  weapons,  and  the  retrans- 
fer  of  the  theater  of  war  to  the  arena  where  it  began.  I  say  in 
this  rebellion,  because  I  am  not  sanguine  enough  to  consider  it 
at  an  end — as  a  very  recent  opinion  of  the  Attorney  General 
transmitted  by  the  President,  admits  it  is  not.  There  are  those, 
I  know,  who  cannot  comprehend  a  state  of  war,  unless  it  comes 
home  to  their  grosser  senses  in  the  rude  shock  of  battalions  and 
the  groans  of  the  wounded  and  the  dying,  and  think,  therefore, 
when  the  standard  drops  from  the  nerveless  grasp,  that  this  is 
peace.  It  is  to  form  a  very  inadequate  conception  of  a  kind  of 
arbitrament  that  depends  as  much  on  skillful  tactics  as  on  hard 
knocks.  Resistance  does  not  always  cease  when  its  arms  are 
stricken  from  its  hands.  The  victory  is  not  always  to  the  strong. 
It  is  as  often  the  guerdon  of  the  wise.  True,  we  have  conquered 
these  people  in  battle,  but  what  of  that?  No  man  was  ever 
converted  from  an  enemy  into  a  friend  by  the  summary  logic 
of  shot  and  shell. 

'  'Who  overcomes 
By  force,  hath  overcome  but  half  his  foe.' 

The  demoniac  spirit  that  animated  this  rebellion — the  same  that 
mutilated  and  starved  and  butchered  our  martyred  heroes,  that 
inoculated  the  veins,  and  rotted  off  the  strong  arm  of  the 
northern  warrior  with  the  deadly  venom  of  the  lazar-house,  that 
baled  the  yellow  fever  as  merchandise  for  this  capital,  and  that 
ended  by  assassinating  our  President — still  lives,  unrepentant, 
unsubdued,  ferocious,  and  devilish  as  ever.  The  battle  still 
rages,  as  it  did  in  these  Halls  long  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
rebellion,  though  under  a  new  phase. 


568  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"  'What  though  the  field  be  lost? 
All  is  not  lost' 

If  arms  have  failed,  there  are  other  weapons,  rejected  by  the 
South  in  its  blind  and  unreasoning  arrogance,  which  have 
proved  in  other  times  more  potent  in  its  hands  than  the  puny 
sword  that  has  just  been  shattered  like  a  potsherd  in  its  collision 
with  the  iron  muscle  of  the  sinewy  laboring  man  of  the  free 
States.  A  bloody  experience  has  taught  them  their  mistake  in 
crossing  swords  with  the  soldiers  of  the  North  instead  of  fighting 
the  battle  in  the  Union,  and  relying  on  the  folly  of  its  statesmen, 
and  the  superior  address  that  harnessed  its  fierce  democracy  to 
their  triumphal  car,  and  made  them  the  masters  of  the  nation 
until  the  period  of  their  revolt.  Hurled  to  the  earth  like  their 
great  prototypes  in  crime,  how  natural  to  find  the  like  consola 
tion  in  the  reflection : 

"  'Henceforth  their  might  we  know,  and  know  our  own; 
So  as  not  either  to  provokej  or  dread 
New  war  provoked;  our  better  part  remains 
To  work  in  close  design,  by  fraud  or  guile, 
What  force  effected  not.' 

"But  this  is  not  the  peace  that  we  have  been  endeavoring 
to  secure.  This  is  not  victory,  but  defeat — just  such  defeat  as 
that  which  follows  the  astounding  paradox  that  our  supposed 
triumph  on  the  Appomattox,  that  made  every  heart  leap  with 
joy,  has  only  purged  the  guilt  of  our  enemies  and  reinstated  them 
here  with  no  right  impaired,  to  'beard  us  in  our  hall,'  and  'push 
us  from  our  stools.'  There  is  nothing,  therefore,  in  the  argu 
ment  to  drive  us  into  such  an  inversion  of  the  natural  and  logical 
order  as  would  be  involved  in  the  imposition  of  State  govern 
ments  by  the  military  arm,  any  more  than  there  is  to  hurry  us 
into  a  premature  and  ill-adjusted  scheme  of  restoration,  when 
there  is  abundant  leisure  to  arrange  our  plans,  and  a  false  step 
would  be  irrevocable.  I  want  a  real  peace  before  reorganization 
and  readmission  here.  Invert  the  order,  and  we  shall  have  no 
peace.  It  will  only  amount,  as  I  have  before  hinted,  to  a  change 
of  weapons,  and  a  retransfer  of  the  seat  of  war  to  these  Chambers, 
whence  they  went  out  four  years  ago  to  try  the  bloody  issue 
that  has  been  determined  against  them,  just  as  they  had  before 
gone  out  in  couples  to  seek  the  blood  of  some  northern  Repre 
sentative. 

"And  now,  as  to  the  admission  that  the  people  of  the  seced 
ing  States  have  been  deprived  of  all  civil  government  whatever. 

"During  the  last  Congress,  as  I  have  already  remarked,  I 
took  some  pains  to  show  that  these  States  were,  by  construction 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         569 

of  law  as  well  as  in  point  of  fact,  outside  of  the  Union,  because 
it  was  apparent  that  the  whole  question  of  our  power  to  deal 
with  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  realize  the  legitimate  results  of 
the  war,  and  exact  the  necessary  securities  for  our  future  peace, 
must  depend  on  the  relation  in  which  the  war  had  left  them. 
The  phraseology,  though  sufficiently  precise,  was  not  perhaps 
as  well  chosen  as  it  might  have  been,  to  exclude  the  idea  either 
that  they  were  out  rightfully  as  States,  or  out  in  point  of  fact 
territorially.  The  'rari  nantes,'  the  few  citizens  of  those  States 
who,  though  outlawed  by  the  belligerent  relation  recognized  by 
our  courts,  as  well  as  by  the  whole  conduct  of  the  war,  and 
positively  established  by  our  legislation  here,  still  remained 
'faithful  among  the  faithless'  would  naturally  protest  against  a 
form  of  expression  that  seemed  to  shut  them  out  from  the  rela 
tion  of  citizens,  and  to  give  them  the  character  of  alien  enemies ; 
and  it  is  perhaps,  therefore,  no  great  matter  of  surprise  that  the 
doctrine  should  have  found  so  little  favor  in  high  places. 
I  do  not  care  to  reargue  that  question  now,  because  it  is  perhaps 
not  material.  Taking  the  word  State  as  contradistinguished 
from  that  of  Government — for  which  there  is  unquestionably  an 
example  and  a  warrant  in  the  language  of  the  constitutional 
clause  of  guaranty — to  mean,  as  it  has  been  defined  by  so  great 
an  authority  as  Mr.  Burke,  'the  commonwealth  at  large,  with 
all  its  orders,  and  all  the  rights  belonging  to  each/  and  not  'the 
ruling  or  governing  power/  it  may  be  admitted  without  damage 
to  the  argument  that  they  are  still  in.  In  that  aspect  of  the 
case  it  must  signify  the  territory,  or  the  people,  whether  black 
or  white,  loyal  or  disloyal,  or  both.  It  cannot  be  the  territory 
only,  because  it  would  then  continue  to  be  a  State,  although 
deprived  of  its  inhabitants  as  well  as  of  its  government,  in  which 
case  it  was  never  pretended  that  it  was  out.  It  cannot  mean  the 
people  only,  because  that  would  make  them  a  State,  though  all 
disclaiming  their  allegiance,  or  all  alien  enemies,  and  owing 
none  except  such  as  was  qualified,  and  temporary,  and  purely 
domiciliary.  In  this  sense  it  is  a  compound  idea,,  of  which  one 
of  the  elements  is  necessarily  a  loyal  people,  and  a  perception  of 
which  is  discernible  in  the  fact,  that  under  the  plan  of  the  procla 
mations  the  voters  are  to  be  confined  to  the  loyal,  or  at  least 
that  portion  of  them  which  has  the  accidental  advantage  of 
having  straighter  hair  or  somewhat  whiter  skins  than  the 
residue. 

"It  is  enough  for  my  purpose,  however,  that  their  political 
organizations,  through  which  only  they  can  maintain  their  appro 
priate  relations  to  our  governmental  system,  have  been — as  it  is 
admitted  they  are — entirely  destroyed;  a  point  which  could  not 


570  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

be  well  contested  in  view  of  the  common-law  rules  that  govern 
in  cases  of  public  or  municipal,  as  of  merely  private  corpora 
tions.  The  proclamations  go  further  in  affirming  that  they  have 
been  'deprived  of  all  civil  government  whatever/  which  would 
imply  a  state  of  anarchy,  and  ignore  alike  the  law  of  conquest, 
and  'the  supreme  law'  under  the  Constitution,  and  thus  extrude 
them  from  the  Union  by  a  strict  logical  necessity.  By  this,  how 
ever,  the  President  intends,  no  doubt,  the  local  governments 
alone.  He  cannot  affirm  a  condition  of  anarchy,  as  this  would 
be,  so  long  as  he  maintains  that  they  are  still  in  the  Union  and 
subject  to  its  laws,  or  in  even  asserting,  as  he  does  by  the 
proclamations  themselves,  the  continuing  jurisdiction  and 
authority  of  the  national  Government  over  them.  Without  any 
government  whatever  there  can  be  no  social  state  except  that  of 
nature.  It  is  as  impossible  to  conceive  the  existence  of  a  civil 
or  political  State  without  an  organism,  as  it  would  be  that  of 
an  animal  or  vegetable  body  in  like  predicament.  Stripped, 
however,  of  all  the  political  organizations  that  held  them 
together  as  members  of  this  Union,  they  must  of  necessity  have 
lapsed  into  a  condition  where  everything  was  lost  except  their 
territorial  relations  and  identity.  In  this  condition,  however, 
of  local  dissolution,  it  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  they 
are  without  powers  of  self-resurrection,  that  without  gov 
ernments  themselves  they  must  receive  their  impulse 
from  without — from  their  only  remaining  sovereign;  and  that 
these  dry  bones — these  festering,  decomposing  elements — must 
at  least  be  breathed  upon  in  order  that  they  may  live ;  and  there 
fore  it  is  that  the  Executive  Magistrate,  in  the  exercise  of 
what  he  conceives  to  be  his  duty,  undertakes  to  impart  the 
required  movement  by  preparing  and  adjusting  the  whole 
machinery,  setting  it  in  motion  with  his  own  hand,  and  even 
prescribing  the  law  by  which  that  motion  was  to  be  governed. 
Whether  these  States  are  in  or  out,  is  no  longer  a  question,  when 
the  rupture  of  their  connections,  and  their  own  incapacity  to 
restore  them  without  the  direction  of  the  ultimate  sovereign, 
are  admitted  elements  in  the  case.  All  that  remains  is  to  decide 
where  this  transcendent  power  is  lodged,  how  it  is  to  be  exer 
cised,  and  who  it  is  that  is  to  speak  this  chaos  into  order,  and 
to  recreate  from  this  admitted  anarchy,  the  future  organism 
that  is  to  claim  its  place  in  our  system. 

"The  proclamations  assume  that  this  high  and  imperial 
function  is  a  purely  executive  one,  and  that  on  the  ground  of  the 
constitutional  obligation  on  the  part  of  the  United  States  to 
guaranty  to  every  State  in  this  Union  a  republican  form  of  gov 
ernment,  and  the  duty  of  the  President  to  see  that  the  laws  are 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         571 

faithfully  executed.  It  is  only  on  the  hypothesis  either  that  this 
officer  is — not  in  the  modest  language  of  Louis  XIV,  the  State 
— but  the  United  States,  or  that  this  executory  agreement  is  in 
the  nature  of  a  law,  which  may  be  enforced  by  the  instrumen 
tality  of  the  sword,  and  without  the  exercise  of  any  discretion 
on  the  part  of  its  minister,  that  the  case  can  be  claimed  to  fall 
within  the  province  of  the  executive  department.  The  former 
of  these  views,  which  seems  to  find  support  in  the  argument  of 
the  gentleman  from  New  York,  I  shall  not  trouble  myself  to 
answer.  If  the  latter  were  true,  and  the  duty  itself  a  purely 
ministerial  one,  the  claim  would  be  unquestionable.  It  is  so 
far  from  being  true,  however,  that  it  would  have  been  impossible 
even  for  Congress  itself  to  provide  in  advance  by  any  general 
enactment,  for  the  many  different  cases  that  might  arise  to 
demand  its  fulfillment.  They  have  not  even  yet  decided  what 
is  to  be  considered  a  republican  form  of  government,  within  the 
meaning  of  the  clause,  or  how  it  is  to  be  erected  in  case  of  the 
overthrow  of  any  of  the  existing  State  governments.  They 
have  endeavored,  it  is  true,  to  provide  for  these  cases,  but  have 
been  met  by  the  argument  that  it  would  be  time  enough  to  cook 
their  hare  when  it  was  caught,  or  the  objection  that  the  Execu 
tive  had  a  better  'plan'  than  their  own,  which  was  in  itself  a 
confession  that  it  was  a  matter  of  doubt  and  discretion,  and 
anything  but  the  performance  of  a  ministerial  duty.  That  plan, 
like  the  present  one,  involved  no  less  a  task  than  the  recon 
struction  of  a  State  from  its  very  foundations,  and  the  declara 
tion  of  the  law  that  was  to  govern  in  the  prosecution  of  that 
work.  In  the  former  case,  the  power  was  conferred  on  a  tithe 
of  the  voters  who  might  take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  for 
swear  the  institution  of  slavery.  In  the  latter,  it  is  confined  to 
the  loyal  men  who  had  voted  before,  without  reference  to  their 
numbers,  and  without  any  definition  of  the  term,  although  it 
was  clear  that  there  was  scarcely  a  loyal  man  in  those  States 
except  those  who  were  excluded.  But  will  anybody  say  that 
the  proclamation  of  the  fundamental  law  of  a  State  is  an  execu 
tive  function?  If  there  be  any  higher  act  of  sovereignty  than 
that  which  founds,  or  reconstructs  a  State,  and  gives  or  denies 
the  elective  franchise  to  any  of  its  citizens,  I  do  not  know  what 
it  is.  The  man  who  makes  the  elector  makes  the  laws  and  the 
magistrates,  and  is  practically  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  dictatorial 
power.  There  are  occasions,  in  the  extremity  of  a  State,  when 
such  a  power  may  be  necessary  for  its  safety.  Nobody  has 
questioned  the  right  of  the  Executive  to  govern  the  conquered 
territories — and  that  by  the  rigors  of  martial  law — in  the  recess 
of  Congress,  and  the  absence  of  any  other  rule.  No  man  has 


572  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

gone  further  than  myself  in  the  support  of  measures  which  were 
necessitated  by  considerations  connected  with  the  public  safety. 
I  can  very  well  recollect  the  time  when  gentlemen  upon  the 
other  side  were  startled  by  the  boldness  of  my  claims  in  favor 
of  a  quasi  dictatorial  power  in  the  Executive,  and  Democratic 
presses  held  me  up  as  the  champion  of  absolutism.  Then,  how 
ever,  it  was  claimed  but  as  the  extreme  medicine  of  the  State, 
and  not  its  daily  bread;  not  to  found  an  empire,  but  to  save  one. 
Thank  God !  the  occasion  for  these  things  has  passed  away.  It 
is  not  longer  permissible  to  resort  to  the  war  power  for  apolo 
gies  for  extreme  measures,  and  particularly  such  as  are  obviously 
unnecessary.  But  there  never  was  anything  in  that  power  to 
warrant  the  erection  of  a  State  by  executive  proclamation. 
That  is  an  act  of  legislation  that  goes  far  beyond  any  example 
in  British  history,  even  in  the  complying  times  of  Henry  VIII, 
when  a  servile  Parliament  made  itself  alike  memorable  and 
infamous  by  giving  to  royal  proclamations  the  force  of  law.  I 
trust  we  are  not  yet  ready  to  emulate  and  even  improve  upon 
this  example.  I  do  not  relish  the  exhumation  from  the  reposi 
tories  of  the  dead  past  of  such  engines  of  arbitrary  power  as 
these.  I  would  as  soon  think  of  going  to  the  Tower  of  London, 
to  borrow  the  material  appliances  that  are  still  there  to  testify 
of  the  tyranny  and  barbarism  of  the  buried  centuries  of  England. 
There  is  a  flavor  about  them  that  is  neither  pleasant  nor  whole 
some.  If  the  work  done  through  such  instrumentalities  had 
been  in  all  respects  what  my  own  judgment  would  have 
approved,  I  should  have  hesitated  long,  on  grounds  of  principle, 
even  in  the  absence  of  any  intended  interference  with  the  rights 
of  this  body,  before  I  would  have  given  my  sanction  to  a  prec 
edent  so  fraught  with  mischief  for  future  times.  I  would  not 
even  mar  the  pedigree  of  the  returning  States  by  allowing  a 
bar  sinister  in  the  escutcheon  of  any  of  them,  and  do  not  care 
to  be  associated  in  history  as  a  member  of  the  Thirty-Ninth 
Congress  of  the  United  States  along  with  the  dishonored  council 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  that  betrayed  the  rights  of  Englishmen 
by  abdicating  its  powers  in  favor  of  such  claims  as  these. 
Crown  lawyers  have  only  defended  them  in  high  prerogative 
times,  as  an  expedient  made  necessary  by  the  unfrequency  of 
Parliaments.  There  is  no  such  apology  in  these  cases.  The 
very  object,  as  confessed  by  the  undisguised  hurry  to  bring  these 
new  governments  to  our  doors  at  the  opening  of  the  session  in 
full  panoply  and  compact  array,  was  to  anticipate  the  action  of 
Congress  in  the  premises.  The  present  Executive,  like  his  pred 
ecessor,  has  his  plan  of  organization.  The  proclamations  dis 
close  it.  He  had  a  right,  of  course,  to  his  opinions.  He  was, 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         573 

however,  a  Southern  man,  and  a  citizen  of  one  of  the  offending 
States.  He  was  not  likely,  therefore,  to  think  in  the  same  way 
precisely  as  the  twenty  millions  of  the  loyal  States  who  had 
fought  this  great  battle.  He  had  never,  if  I  mistake  not,  declared 
himself  very  strongly  against  slavery,  except  so  far  as  it  was 
in  antagonism  with  the  Union.  His  local  associations  and 
prejudices  of  education  were  a  priori  almost  sure  to  arrest  him 
at  that  point  where  a  guaranty  of  the  civil  rights  of  the  enfran 
chised  class  should  be  demanded.  He  had  been  loyal  and  faith 
ful  under  great  trials.  That  fidelity  had  made  him  the 
choice  of  the  Union  party  of  the  North  for  the  second  office  in 
the  Republic.  The  bloody  hand  of  treason  opened  the  way  for 
his  succession  to  the  first.  It  had  become  his  right  to  advise, 
and  his  opinions  were  entitled  at  all  events  to  the  highest  possi 
ble  respect,  but  the  mode  of  enforcing  them  was  pointed  out  in 
the  Constitution.  It  was  only  through  Congress  that  he  could 
properly  make  them  known,  and  the  very  relation  in  which  he 
stood  toward  the  loyal  States  seemed  to  make  it  peculiarly  appro 
priate  that  he  should  take  no  step  without  at  least  conferring 
with  their  representatives.  He  has  not  chosen  to  follow  this 
course.  He  has  preferred  to  treat  directly  with  the  rebels  them 
selves,  or  to  dictate  as  a  conqueror,  such  terms  of  restoration  as 
were  agreeable  to  himself.  I  will  not  say  that  this  was  done 
because  he  apprehended  the  existence  of  a  different  opinion  here, 
but  the  effect  is,  that  the  opinion  of  the  Executive,  hurried  into 
act  in  advance  of  our  assemblage — supposing  such  a  difference 
not  impossible — is  thus  staked  against  the  will  of  the  representa 
tive  body.  It  is  the  sword  of  Brennus  flung  into  the  scale.  It 
looks  to  me — nay,  in  the  light  of  the  message  it  is — a  chal 
lenge  to  Congress  and  the  free  North,  upon  a  question  of  juris 
diction  in  a  case  where  their  exclusive  cognizance  is  not  even 
open  to  dispute,  which  we  cannot  afford  to  decline,  and  upon 
the  acceptance  or  refusal  of  which  will  depend  the  determina 
tion  of  the  point  whether,  in  the  face  of  an  executive  edict,  an 
opposing  legislative  will  is  possible. 

"If  a  claim  of  this  sort  was  stoutly  and  successfully  resisted 
by  our  ancestors,  when  asserted  by  the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts, 
how  are  we  to  excuse  ourselves  to  posterity  for  surrendering 
it  now  to  a  mere  temporary  Executive  of  our  own  choice,  with 
powers  so  limited  and  so  accurately  defined?  I  trust  we  have 
not  become  so  habituated  to  the  exercise  of  a  prerogative  like 
this,  as  to  have  forgotten  that  there  are  boundaries,  which  in  a 
state  of  peace  no  department  of  the  Government  can  safely  be 
allowed  to  pass.  The  danger  throughout — the  one  prefigured 
by  some  of  the  leading  spirits  of  the  Revolution;  the  one  fore- 


5/4  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

shadowed  when  Patrick  Henry  declared,  'Your  President  will 
be  a  King' — has  been  in  this  direction  only.  The  vast  discretion 
necessarily  lodged  in  the  Commander-in-Chief  in  times  like 
those  through  which  we  have  just  passed,  the  extreme  promi 
nence  of  his  position,  and  the  enormous  influence  arising  from 
the  control  of  an  immense  expenditure,  were  almost  sure  to 
give  to  that  officer  a  greatly  prepondering  weight,  and  to  make 
the  world — accustomed  only  to  royal  wars  and  royal  rule — 
believe  that  it  was  the  President  alone,  and  not  the  Congress  or 
the  people,  who  had  saved  this  nation,  and  whose  business  it  was 
to  restore  it  in  all  its  parts.  And  therefore  it  was  that  the  same 
claim  of  power  in  the  proclamation  of  December,  1863,  provoked 
no  animadversion  here,  while  the  details  of  the  Presidential  plan 
were  subjected  to  the  severest  criticism;  and  no  special  com 
plaint  was  made  when  the  will  of  the  law-making  power  was  dis 
regarded  and  overruled.  And  therefore  it  was,  too,  that  the 
House  bill  failed  on  a  second  trial.  And  for  the  same  reason, 
it  is  now,  that  the  press  and  politicians  of  the  nation,  instead  of 
controverting  the  power  of  the  Executive  altogether  to  meddle 
with  the  reorganization  of  these  States,  and  denouncing  the 
attempt  on  his  part  as  a  clear  usurpation,  have  only  complained 
in  whispers  and  with  'bated  breath/  that  he  did  not  extend  the 
right  of  suffrage  to  the  black  man,  while  even  so  intelligent  a 
personage  as  Robert  Dale  Owen,  has  referred  to  this  work  of 
reconstruction  as  the  greatest  of  the  many  difficult  and  responsi 
ble  duties  which  the  termination  of  the  war  has  devolved  on 
the  new  President;  and  even  the  fierce  Democracy  itself,  which 
made  the  night  of  the  rebellion  hideous  with  its  ululations  about 
arbitrary  power,  is  either  smitten  dumb  with  admiration,  or 
swells  the  peans  of  triumphant  treason  with  a  chorus  of  halle 
lujahs,  in  honor  of  the  wisdom  that  surprises  and  anticipates 
its  wildest  hopes.  It  seems,  indeed,  to  have  been  well-nigh  for 
gotten  throughout  the  country,  as  well  as  at  the  other  end  of  the 
Avenue,  that  we  have  a  Congress,  which  is,  under  the  Consti 
tution,  the  law-making  power  of  this  nation.  People  inquire 
only  what  does  the  President  intend;  while  the  Associated 
Press  ministers  to  their  curiosity  by  daily  bulletins,  reporting 
every  phase  of  the  imperial  pulse,  as  though  it  were  watching 
by  the  bedside  of  royalty,  and  kindly  informing  us  all  of  the 
precise  terms  on  which  the  President  has  determined  to  readmit 
the  traitors  on  this  floor.  The  time  has  now  come,  however,  to 
rectify  these  errors,  and  to  assert  and  maintain  the  rightful 
jurisdiction  and  powers  of  this  body,  if  they  are  ever  to  be 
asserted  again.  With  the  highest  admiration  of  the  constancy 
and  heroism  of  the  present  Executive  under  the  severest  trials, 


575 

and  with  every  disposition  to  support  his  Administration  so 
far  as  fidelity  to  my  own  high  trust  will  allow,  I  cannot  consent 
that  a  question  like  this,  in  which  the  interests  of  so  many  gen 
erations  are  involved,  shall  be  withdrawn  from  the  people  of  the 
loyal  States,  who  have  suffered  and  sacrificed  so  largely,  and 
settled  by  the  decision  of  any  one  or  even  seven  men,  no  matter 
whence  they  come,  or  what  positions  they  may  hold.  No  more 
can  I  allow  myself  to  be  instructed  here,  that  while  the  power 
of  settling  the  terms  of  readmission  is  with  the  President,,  I 
have  no  jurisdiction  as  an  American  legislator,  except  to  regis 
ter  the  acts  that  he  has  done,  and  then  humbly  inquire  as  a 
member  of  this  House  only,  whether  the  candidates  who  present 
themselves  for  admission  here  have  complied  with  the  mere 
formalities  which  his  Legislatures  have  prescribed.  It  is  here 
only — in  these  Halls — that  American  liberty  can  live.  They  are 
her  inner  sanctuary — her  holy  of  holies — her  strong  tower  of 
defense — her  last  refuge  and  abiding  place.  Here  are  her  altars, 
and  here  her  priesthood.  It  is  only  here,  too,  that  my  own 
great  State,  whose  blood  has  been  poured  out  like  rain,  and 
whose  canonized  dead  are  now  sleeping  on  every  battle-field  of 
freedom,  has  been  called  into  counsel  during  the  last  four  years. 
She  has  no  voice  elsewhere.  On  the  theory  of  the  President, 
and  the  results  of  his  experiments,  she  has  given  out  no  uncer 
tain  sound.  She  bids  her  sons  whom  she  has  placed  on  guard 
at  the  Capitol  in  this  hour  of  the  nation's  trial,  stand  faithfully 
— as  did  her  heroes  in  the  bloody  trench — by  their  trusts  as 
Representatives,  and  resist  with  jealous  watchfulness  every 
attempt  from  whatever  quarter,  to  encroach  upon  the  just  pow 
ers  which  she  has  delegated  to  them.  If  the  performance  of 
this  duty  should  involve  a  difference  with  the  Executive  of  her 
own  choice,  while  she  would  deplore  the  necessity,  she  will 
expect  her  Representatives  to  take  counsel  from  those  who  sent 
them  here,  alike  unawed  by  the  frowns  and  unseduced  by  the 
blandishments  of  power.  I  dread  the  conflict,  which  is  not  a 
new  one  in  the  world's  history,,  but  I  cannot  choose  but  meet 
it  when  it  comes;  and  I  have  a  trust  that  we  shall  yet  be  able 
to  discuss  the  great  question  of  the  times,  and  to  settle  it,  too, 
without  prejudice,  and  in  utter  oblivion  of  the  fact  that  the 
Executive  has  any  theory  on  the  subject. 

"It  has  been  said,  however,  by  way  of  quieting  the  public 
fears,  that  these  plans  were  merely  experimental,  and  that  no 
harm  could  come  of  them,  because,  under  the  Constitution,  Con 
gress  must  be  the  judge  at  last  of  the  qualifications  and  eligi 
bility  of  those  who  might  present  themselves  for  admission  to 
seats  in  that  body.  The  work  accomplished,  we  are  now 


THOMAS    WILLIAMS 


awakened  to  the  fact,  that  the  power  referred  to  here  is  only 
that  of  each  House  acting  separately  upon  the  qualifications  of 
its  own  members.  While  the  Executive  assumes  the  right  him 
self  of  founding  new  governments,  by  a  new  law  declaring  who 
shall  vote,  and  settling  by  telegraph  the  terms  of  their  consti 
tutions,  he  is  pleased  to  claim,  in  his  recent  message,  for  these 
creatures  of  his  own  —  other  but  still  the  same  —  with  their  vitali 
ties  repaired  at  that  fountain  only  —  the  right  to  resume,  of  course, 
and  without  inquiry  into  his  work  or  theirs,  the  places  which, 
by  an  ingenious  fiction,  they  are  supposed  to  have  before  held 
in  both  branches  of  the  national  Legislature,  making,  as  he 
says,  'the  work  of  restoration  thereby  complete;'  while  we  are 
instructed  in  terms  of  unusual  emphasis,  that  then  it  will  be 
for  us,  'each  of  us  for  ourselves,'  to  proceed  to  judge  of  the 
smaller  matters  of  the  law  in  regard  to  'the  elections,  returns, 
and  qualifications  of  our  own  members.'  These  instructions  are, 
perhaps,  somewhat  unusual,  and  possibly  not  that  kind  of  infor 
mation  precisely  to  which  the  Constitution  refers,  but  I  do  not 
quarrel  with  them  on  grounds  of  etiquette,  even  though  the 
advice  may  seem  gratuitous,  and  the  jealousy  of  a  British  Par 
liament  might  have  regarded  it  as  a  breach  of  privilege.  They 
are  not,  it  is  true,  exactly  in  accordance  with  the  tenor  of  the 
authorized  report  of  Mr.  Stearns,  which  did  convey  the 
opinion  that  we  might  'check  these  new  governments  at  any 
stage,  and  oblige  them  to  confess  their  errors,'  unless  it  was 
intended  to  affirm  that  power  only  as  the  special  prerogative  of 
the  Executive  himself.  They  are,  however,  the  official  utter 
ances,  and  the  apology  assumes,  of  course,  that  there  is  no  ques 
tion  of  legislation  involved.  With  this  interpretation  of  its 
meaning,  there  is  nothing  left  to  Congress,  but  to  register  the 
edicts  and  ratify  the  work  of  the  Executive.  Taking  it,  however, 
to  be  otherwise,  they  are  still  not  less  obnoxious  to  objection. 
It  may  be  conceded  that  States  have  been  admitted  here  with 
out  any  precedent  legislation  though  none,  I  think,  where  they 
were  organized  under  the  direction  of  the  military  power,  and 
none,  certainly,  without  the  concurrent  vote  of  the  two  Houses. 
By  those,  moreover,  who  think  that  these  States  were  never  out, 
it  will  be  insisted,  in  accordance  with  the  executive  idea,  that 
they  want  no  recognition,  and  the  refusal  of  Congress  to 
admit  their  members  will  be  only  regarded  as  a  denial  of  right. 
But  the  mere  negative  of  either  House  upon  the  question  of 
their  admission,  is  a  power  greatly  inferior  to  that  which  pre 
sides  over  their  organization,  and  prescribes  the  law  by  which 
the  formative  process  is  to  be  regulated  —  just  as  inferior  as  the 
veto  lodged  by  the  Constitution  in  the  hands  of  the  Executive^ 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  ''RESTORATION"         577 

is  to  the  initiative  of  the  Legislature.  The  builders  will  work 
according  to  that  law,  and  as  it  prescribes,  so  will  the  structure 
be.  As  we  sow,  we  must  expect  to  reap.  'Men  do  not  gather 
grapes  from  thorns,  or  figs  from  thistles.'  Thus,  if  a  privileged 
class  is  to  elect  the  delegates,  their  work  will  be  in  accordance 
with  the  principle  of  their  origin,  and  will  be  submitted — if  sub 
mitted  at  all — for  approval  or  rejection  to  the  same  parties  who 
inspired  it ;  and  if  the  government  so  framed  is  to  be  recog 
nized  because  it  professes  to  be  a  representative  one,  the  right 
of  declaring  its  whole  fundamental  law  might  as  well  be 
accorded  to  the  Executive,  as  that  of  declaring  a  part  of  it,  and 
assembling  a  convention  to  alter  or  amend  that  part.  There 
was  no  occasion,  however,  for  experiments  of  this  sort,  whose 
only  tendency  is  to  forestall  the  action  of  the  legislative  power, 
or  to  bring  about  a  mischievous  conflict  between  the  two 
branches  of  the  Government.  If  this  is  properly  a  legislative 
— and  not  an  executive  function — as  nobody  can  successfully 
deny — the  President  has  his  veto,  at  all  events,  upon  the  action  of 
Congress.  He  cannot  invert  the  order,  and  change  the  constitu 
tional  relation,  by  initiating  an  act  of  legislation,  and  leaving  to 
Congress  only  a  negative  voice  thereon,  particularly  in  a  case 
where  the  voters  named  by  himself  are  expressly  endowed  with 
the  power  to  restore  the  State  to  its  constitutional  relations  with 
the  Federal  Government,  and  to  present  such  form  of  govern 
ment  as  will  entitle  it  to  the  guaranty  of  the  United  States,  and 
where,  of  course,  it  is  expected  that  their  work  shall  be  con- 
^clusive. 

"It  will  be  said,  perhaps,  in  reply  to  all  this,  that  the  object 
here  was  not  to  found  a  State  government,  but  to  allow  the 
legal  voters  of  the  old  regime  the  privilege  of  altering  and 
amending  their  original  forms  of  government,  so  as  to  restore 
them  to  their  constitutional  relations,  and  entitle  them  to  the 
benefit  of  the  guaranty. 

"It  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  these  are  a  part  of  the  objects 
stated  in  the  proclamations.  I  will  not  say  that  this  was  done 
by  way  of  protest  against  the  logical  conclusion  from  their 
premises,  from  the  whole  character  of  the  act  itself,  and  the 
assumption  of  power  which  it  involved,  that  the  measure  was  a 
revolutionary  one — as  Governor  Orr  admits  it  to  have  been.  I 
shall  be  excused,  however,  for  suggesting  that  it  was  unfortu 
nate  that  the  law  adviser  of  the  Government — perhaps  its  politi 
cal  Nestor — should  have  overlooked  in  this  a  departure  from  his 
own  premises,  that  could  scarcely  have  been  excused  in  a  junior 
pleader  in  the  Northern  States.  He  had  obviously  forgotten  the 
recital  on  which  these  proclamations  rest — the  postulate  that 


578  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

'the  revolutionary  progress  of  the  rebellion  had  deprived  these 
States  of  all  civil  government  whatever/  and  the  declaration 
that  the  purpose  of  these  conventions  was  to  enable  the  loyal 
people  of  these  Territories,  not  'to  alter  or  amend'  their  consti 
tutions,  but  'to  organize/  or  construct  anew,  where  the  original 
government  was  admitted  to  have  perished.  Whenever  he  shall 
be  able  to  explain  how  a  constitution  can  exist  in  a  Government 
that  has  been  altogether  destroyed,  or  why  he  should  have 
treated  the  process  of  organisation  as  a  mere  process  of  repair, 
I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  him.  The  man  who  reaches  this 
conclusion  from  his  premises,  will  have  'no  narrow  frith  to 
cross.'  I  hope  I  shall  not  be  considered  uncharitable,  however, 
in  suggesting  that  all  this  inconsequential  logic  looks  to  me  as  if 
it  was  the  effect  of  an  unhappy  struggle  to  escape  the  conse 
quences  of  a  doctrine,  which  was  felt  to  be  necessary  in  order  to 
raise  the  power  in  the  President,  and  is  then  discarded,  after 
having  served  that  use,  in  order  to  remove  the  case  from  the 
jurisdiction  of  Congress.  It  will  require  something  more,  I 
think,  than  either  the  subtlety  of  a  northern  placeman,  or  the 
exploded  metaphysics  of  a  Kentucky  statesman,  to  reconcile  any 
one  step  in  the  action  of  the  Government,  with  the  idea  of  the 
continuing  existence  of  the  States. 

"In  the  same  spirit,  however,  apparently,  that  prompted  the 
softening  down  of  an  organization  into  a  mere  question  of  alter 
ation  and  amendment,  there  is  a  studied  avoidance  of  a  phrase 
ology  that  has  found  acceptance  here,  without  even  provoking 
criticism.  We  called  this  heretofore,  in  our  simplicity,  by  the 
harmless  name  of  'reconstruction.'  The  Attorney  General  pro 
tests,  like  Bardolph,  'by  this  light  I  know  not  the  phrase/  and 
straightway  our  nomenclature  falls  into  disrepute.  Well,  I  am 
ready  to  maintain,  if  necessary,  in  the  language  of  the  same 
dramatic  personage,  that  it  is  'a  very  soldier-like  word,  and  of 
exceeding  good  command.'  It  is  the  merest  hypercriticism  to 
object  its  application  to  the  adjustment  of  our  relations  with 
the  revolting  States ;  but  whatever  difference  there  may  be  here, 
it  is  impossible  that  there  can  be  any  dispute  among  scholars  in 
regard  to  its  precise  aptitude  in  describing  the  reorganization 
of  a  State.  The  question  is  too  big,  however,  to  be  settled  in 
this  way.  If  anybody  prefers  the  word  'restoration/  I  have  no 
objection  apart  from  its  historical  significance.  It  was  the 
phrase  used  on  the  return  of  the  Stuarts.  I  hope  it  is  not 
ominous.  Charles  II  came  back  without  conditions,  notwith 
standing  the  efforts  of  Hale,  who  endeavored  to  secure  them, 
but  was  put  down  by  the  assurances  of  General  Monk.  (I  hope 
we  are  to  have  no  General  Monk  in  this  case.)  Bishop  Burnet 


"'RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         579 

says  that  this  omission  was  the  cause  of  all  the  errors  of  his 
reign,  which  it  required  the  Revolution  to  cure.  I  know  that 
there  is  a  confidence  here,  and  a  longing  in  some  quarters,  not 
unlike  that  of  the  Jacobites  of  England,  for  the  return  of  the 
self-exiled  royal  family  of  the  South,  but  I  trust  we  are  not 
about  to  lay  the  foundation  for  another  revolution  by  the  same 
mistake.  Apart  from  this,  I  repeat  that  I  am  indifferent  as  to 
the  word.  It  is  sufficient  for  me  that  it  implies,,  if  not  destruc 
tion,  at  least  derangement — disturbance — displacement.  The 
revolting  States  have,  by  a  new  law,  deflected  from  their  orbits, 
gathered  round  a  new  center,  and  ceased  to  compose  a  part  of 
our  system,  or  to  be  obedient  to  its  law.  They  want  renewal  or 
regeneration.  They  require  to  be  brought  back  by  an  interior 
adjustment  that  will  reinstate  the  law  that  has  been  broken. 
They  are  in  the  system,  and  compose  a  part  of  it  only  de  jure. 
Nobody  can  say  that  they  are  there  in  point  of  fact,  because  that 
would  contradict  not  only  our  knowledge,  but  our  senses.  Some 
thing,  it  is  admitted  on  all  hands,  must  be  done  to  re-establish 
their  relations  with  the  Union.  They  cannot  do  it  themselves. 
Nobody  pretends  that  by  the  mere  repeal  of  their  secession 
ordinances  they  can  resume  their  places  here — as  they  might  do 
if  they  have  not  withdrawn — in  virtue  of  their  original  title,  and 
with  all  their  rights  and  privileges  unabridged.  Their  Legisla 
tures  have  been  even  forbidden  to  assemble.  The  Executive 
thinks  that  by  their  act  of  treason  the  citizens  consenting  thereto 
have  forfeited  their  highest  political  right — that  of  self-govern 
ment — and  that  to  this  extent  their  constitutions — not  as  they 
stand  now,  but  as  they  stood  before  the  rebellion — are  practically 
abrogated.  He  thinks,  too,  obviously,  that  by  their  abdication  or 
dereliction — as  in  the  case  of  James  II — the  sovereignty  has 
lapsed — but  not  to  us.  A  committee  of  the  last  House  insisted 
that  it  returned  to  the  conquered  people.  He  claims  it  for  him 
self,  and  accordingly  sets  aside  their  Legislatures,  Governors, 
and  judges,  reconstitutes  the  body-politic,  declares  who  shall  be 
its  members,  and  appoints  a  provisional  governor  to  keep  the 
peace,  and  call  the  privileged  parties  together  to  organize  a 
new  government.  And  all  this  is  called  amendment,  upon  the 
ingenious  suggestion  that  they  are  to  build  on  the  substratum 
of  their  dead  constitutions !  No  cunning  phraseology — no  arti 
fice  of  words — however,  can  change  the  nature  of  a  thing.  The 
re-enactment  of  a  part  of  an  abrogated  law,  either  with  or  with 
out  addition,  is  no  amendment.  They  might  as  well  have  taken 
the  constitution  of  Pennsylvania  to  work  upon,  and  in  either 
case  the  product  would  have  been  a  new  constitution. 


580  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"But  why  so  studiously  insist  on  the  avoidance  of  other 
phraseology  than  this?  Because,  as  it  is  urged,  although  the 
people  of  a  State  may  destroy  their  government,  it  still  subsists 
in  gremio  legis,  or,  in  the  language  of  the  message,  following  that 
of  an  ingenious  southern  Governor,  'in  abeyance,'  or,  as  lawyers 
would  phrase  it,  in  the  clouds — on  the  charitable  hypothesis  that 
suicide  is  impossible,  because  it  is  forbidden,  and,  therefore,  by 
a  pleasant  fiction,  all  those  pregnant  acts  that  have  scarred  a 
continent  with  fire,  and  covered  it  with  ruins,  are  simply  void, 
and  to  be  ignored  as  nullities.  And  this  we  are  now  informed 
by  the  Executive  is  'the  true  theory.'  It  is  undoubtedly  the 
convenient  one — for  the  traitors — because  it  furnishes  no  solu 
tion  of  the  great  problem  of  the  times,  except  in  the  surrender 
of  all  control  over  the  rebellious  States,  and  the  restoration  of 
their  people,  without  conditions,  and  with  absolute  immunity 
for  all  their  crimes.  Why  it  is  the  true  one,  he  has  not  vouch 
safed  to  show.  I  know,  of  course,  that  the  high  functionary  who 
dispenses  the  patronage  of  such  an  empire  as  this  is  not  always 
expected  to  render  a  reason  when  he  chooses  to  dogmatize,  and 
that,  in  the  view  of  but  too  many  of  the  leaders  of  public  opinion, 
it  is  impossible  for  such  a  man  to  err.  With  a  practice,  how 
ever,  so  entirely  at  variance  with  this  theory,  and  an  admission, 
too,  in  the  same  breath,  that  'the  policy  of  military  rule  over  a 
conquered  territory' — the  very  rule  under  which  all  that  region 
has  been  governed,  and  all  these  States  reconstructed  during 
the  recess  of  Congress — 'would  have  implied  that,  by  the  act 
of  their  inhabitants,  they  had  ceased  to  exist,'  it  would  not  have 
been  unreasonable  to  expect  an  explanation  of  the  course  that 
has  been  actually  pursued  within  the  jurisdiction  of  independent 
States,  that  enjoyed  the  rare  advantage — unhappily  denied  to  our 
race — of  being  incapable  of  sin,  and  equally  unobnoxious  to  the 
penalty  of  death.  The  only  answer  that  he  could  have  made 
would  have  been  that  the  doctrine,  although  good  as  a  theory, 
was  good  for  nothing  else,  because  it  would  not  work,  and  was 
utterly  inadmissible  in  practice.  The  State,  however,  in  the 
judgment  of  the  President,  still  lives,  with  only  an  'impaired 
vitality,'  although  its  government  has  been  destroyed.  It  is  dead, 
to  be  sure,  as  Lazarus ;  in  no  mere  trance,  where  the  vital  forces 
are  still  holding  the  organization  together,  but  with  all  its  ele 
ments  putrescent  or  decomposed;  but  then  there  is  a  power  in 
the  Executive,  beyond  the  kingly  touch  that  purged  the  leprous 
taint  from  the  blood  of  the  believing,  that  can  awaken  it  from 
the  sleep  of  death,  lead  it  forth  in  its  grave-clothes,  tide  it  safely 
over  the  frith  of  a  four  years'  rebellion,  and  bridge  over  the 
unfathomable  gulf  that  during  all  this  time  has  divided  it  from 


''RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  '"RESTORATION"         581 

the  living !  Yes,  while  it  is  admitted  again  and  again  that  the 
old  State  governments  were  lost  beyond  even  the  means  of  self- 
resurrection,  this  modern  Phoenix  is  supposed  by  some  mysteri 
ous  conveyance,  by  some  metempsychosis  unknown  to  the 
philosophers  of  Greece  or  the  priesthood  of  the  Nile,  and  only 
rivaled  by  the  imposture  of  the  Grand  Lama  himself,  to  have 
inherited  the  vital  breath  of  the  defunct  State  government, 
though  that  State  government — dead  to  us,  if  not  dead  altogether 
— has  transmigrated  into  the  confederacy,  and  now  lies  buried 
among  its  ruins.  But  let  us  examine  this  new  revelation. 

"If  the  acts  done  by  these  States  had  involved  only  a  ques 
tion  of  excess  of  power,  as  in  the  case  of  a  law  enacted  by  a 
State  Legislature  in  violation  of  the  fundamental  law,  this  view 
of  the  case  might  have  derived  support  from  the  doctrine  that 
prevails  in  such  cases.  Here,  however,  the  fundamental  law 
itself  was  changed  by  the  very  power  that  enacted  it.  Whether 
rightfully  or  not,  in  view  of  their  Federal  relations,  is  not  now 
the  question.  It  is  sufficient  that  they  did,,  in  point  of  fact, 
erect  new  governments  upon  the  ruins  of  the  old.  And  this, 
although  it  had  been  expressly  forbidden,  could  not,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  be  prevented.  There  was  nothing  in  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  that  could  hinder  the  perpetration  of  an  act 
either  of  treason  or  suicide.  They  might  have  allowed  their 
governments  to  perish  by  omitting  to  supply  their  integral 
members,  or  they  might  have  withdrawn — as  they  did — from  the 
Federal  connection  by  entering  into  other  alliances,  disclaiming 
its  authority,  and  refusing  to  obey  its  law,  or  take  any  part  in 
the  administration  of  its  affairs.  All  this  they  did,  and  more. 
It  was  the  act  of  the  people  themselves.  There  was  no  inter 
regnum.  They  carried  their  constitutions  into  their  new  rela 
tions — changed,  it  is  true,  in  this  particular,  but  still  republican 
in  form.  They  might  have  changed  them  into  monarchies.  Their 
new  establishments  are  now  overthrown.  But  how  is  this  to 
revive  others  that  are  admitted  to  have  previously  perished? 
Nobody  pretends  that  it  could.  The  proclamations  themselves 
admit  that  they  have  been  left  without  governments,  and  without 
means  of  recovery  except  at  the  hands  of  the  Executive.  Can 
it  be  truly  said,  then,  that  any  portion  of  the  original  structure 
was  rescued  from  the  general  wreck?  If  there  was,  then  how 
much,  and  who  shall  declare  it?  True,  one  of  the  objects  stated 
is  to  enable  them  to  restore  themselves.  But  does  anybody 
insist  that  they  can  do  it?  Is  this  consistent  with  the  grounds  on 
which  the  proclamations  rest?  If  they  can,  what  is  to  be  said  in 
apology  for  executive  interference?  If  they  can,  what  is  to  be 
said  of  the  other  object  declared  in  these  instruments,  which  is 


582  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

'to  enable  the  people  of  those  States  to  present  such  forms  of 
government  as  will  entitle  them  to  the  benefit  of  the  constitu 
tional  guaranty,  by  restoring  them  to  their  constitutional  rela 
tions,  and  their  people,  therefore,  to  protection  from  invasion, 
insurrection,  and  domestic  violence  ?'  What  does  all  this  mean  ? 
If  they  were  States  in  the  Union,  it  required  no  process  of 
organization  or  restoration,  to  confer  on  them  the  advantage  of 
these  rights,  because  they  were  entitled  to  them  already  by  the 
very  letter  of  the  Constitution.  It  is  because  they  are  not — 
because  they  have  been  'deprived  of  all  civil  government  what 
ever' — that  the  President  proposes  to  make  them  so,  and  to 
endow  them  with  these  rights  anew,  by  reannexing  and  bringing 
them  again  into  the  Federal  connection — from  which  they  have 
been  confessedly  detached — upon  a  new  title,  by  his  own  act,  and 
without  any  agency  of  ours.  It  is  a  confession  of  outlawry, 
which  no  legal  acumen,  no  ingenuity  of  phrase,  can  explain 
away,  and  it  is  worse  than  idle  to  quibble  upon  forms  of  expres 
sion  in  the  face  of  such  an  admission. 

"But  supposing  these  State  constitutions  to  be  still  in  force, 
as  they  existed  antecedently  to  the  passage  of  the  several  ordi 
nances  of  secession,  on  the  ground  that  all  that  has  been  enacted 
since  in  violation  of  the  Federal  law  was  simply  void,  what 
then  was  the  occasion  for  any  amendment,  and  whence  does  the 
President  derive  his  authority  to  interfere  at  all,  and  to  change 
the  law  as  it  stood  before,  even  on  the  subject  of  amendments? 
In  that  case  they  may  return,  of  course,  whenever  they  think 
proper,  without  any  legislation  whatever.  Why  await  the  repeal 
of  an  act  that  is  absolutely  void?  What  is  to  prevent  them  from 
coming  back  with  their  constitutions  as  they  are?  Taking  it  to 
be  a  question  of  amendment  only,  it  is  clearly  in  their  discre 
tion  to  amend  or  not;  and  if  they  are  still  in  the  Union,  there 
is  no  power  here  or  elsewhere  to  say  what  amendments  they 
shall  make,  or  that  they  shall  not  resume  their  places  here  with 
out  alteration  of  any  sort.  The  executive  branch  of  the  Govern 
ment  admits,  however,  that  something  must  be  done  to  restore 
these  outlaws  to  their  original  status  in  the  Union.  The  war 
has  resulted,  as  we  agree  in  thinking,  in  the  emancipation  of  the 
slave,  and  the  destruction  of  the  elective  franchise  along  with 
the  government ;  and  these  things  must  be  in  some  way  acknowl 
edged.  They  are  unquestionably  forfeitures;  but  should  they 
refuse  to  recognize  them,  that  refusal  would,  on  his  hypothesis, 
constitute  no  sufficient  reason  for  excluding  them.  The  ques 
tion  of  the  effect  of  the  proclamation  of  freedom  is  one  that 
belongs  to  the  courts,  and  you  cannot  draw  it  within  the  juris 
diction  of  Congress  or  the  President,  except  by  assuming  that 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         583 

these  States  are  out  and  must  be  formally  readmitted.  In  that 
case  you  may  prescribe  terms.  Without  that  you  must  open 
when  they  knock,  without  inquiry  as  to  their  constitutions,  with 
which  you  will  then  have  nothing  to  do.  To  stipulate  for  the 
acknowledgment  of  these  things,  is  but  to  treat  for  their  read- 
mission  on  that  basis,  and  amounts  to  no  more  or  less  than  a 
compromise  with  a  belligerent;  and  they  may  reject  the  condi 
tions,  because  you  can  impose  no  terms  of  amendment  upon 
them. 

'Taking  it,  however,  that  their  constitutions  do  require  to 
be  amended  for  these  purposes,  how  is  this  work  to  be  done? 
Not  by  executive  direction  certainly.  The  President  has  no 
more  power  to  set  up  a  new  class  of  electors  in  South  Carolina 
than  in  Massachusetts.  There  is  but  one  way,  and  that  is  in 
accordance  with  the  law  which  they  prescribe  themselves,  which 
must  have  survived  if  any  part  of  their  constitutions  did.  The 
process  which  ignores  that  law,  as  the  proclamations  do,  is 
radical  and  revolutionary,  and  is  no  less  in  effect  than  absolute 
reconstruction.  The  sovereign  power  of  the  people  may  act  in 
this  way  undoubtedly,  but  when  it  does  there  is  an  end  of  the 
existing  government. 

"A  word  now  as  to  the  answer  that  all  this  was  intended 
only  to  allow  to  the  people  the  privilege  of  doing  this  work 
themselves. 

"If  the  object  had  been  only  to  keep  the  peace  for  the  pur 
pose  of  allowing  these  people  to  decide  whether  they  would 
erect  a  new  government,  and  apply  for  readmission  into  the 
Union,  nobody  would  have  complained,  although  the  necessity 
for  interfering  in  this  way  was  conclusive  that  they  were  not 
in  a  condition  to  exercise  these  rights,  and  that  the  act  was  not 
a  voluntary  one.  But  they  were  not  asking  the  privilege  of 
coming  back  again.  It  was  not  essential  that  they  should  come, 
until  they  were  ready  for  it.  It  was  essential  that  when  they 
did,  it  should  be  of  their  own  pure  volition.  To  compel  it,  was 
as  impracticable  as  it  was  undesirable.  And  yet  the  essence  of 
the  proclamations  is  a  command.  They  are  not  permissive  but 
imperative.  The  people  might  not  be  ready,  but  that  made  no 
difference.  If  any  of  them  failed,  it  was  a  default.  The  right 
to  vote  was  not  a  privilege,  but  a  duty.  The  white  men,  who 
were  loyal  and  would  take  the  oath,  must  reconstruct  their 
governments  at  all  events.  It  is  idle  to  say,  therefore,  that  this 
was  a  mere  indulgence  to  their  prayers.  It  went  in  advance  of 
the  wishes  of  the  people,  and  this  is  the  construction  placed  upon 
it  by  the  highest  intelligences  of  the  South. 


584  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"And  now  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  power  claimed  by  the 
Executive  has  been  exercised. 

"If  the  function  were  a  purely  executive  one,  it  could  not 
go,  of  course,  beyond  the  mere  permission  for  the  assemblage 
of  conventions,  and  the  pledge  of  protection  to  the  citizen  in  the 
exercise  of  this  privilege.  To  favor  classes — to  proclaim  that 
this  or  that  citizen  should  not  be  allowed  to  vote — was  some 
thing  more  than  an  executive  act.  In  the  case  of  a  civil  disso 
lution  and  the  absence  of  all  government,  such  as  the  proclama 
tions  admit,  all  were,  of  course,  remitted  to  that  natural 
equality  which  is  recognized  in  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  and  had  only  been  suspended  by  force  of  the  civil  institu 
tions  which  had  then  ceased  to  exist.  The  right  of  the  negro, 
whether  previously  bond  or  free,  was  in  that  condition  of  things, 
as  perfect  as  that  of  the  white  man,  and  the  latter  had  no  more 
right  to  say  to  the  former  that  he  should  not  vote,  than  the 
former  had  to  hold  the  same  language  to  him.  All  privileges 
of  caste  or  complexion  that  existed  under  their  old  constitutions 
were  gone  along  with  the  constitutions  themselves.  And  this  is 
in  accordance  with  the  doctrine  everywhere  received  throughout 
this  nation,  where  all  limitations  upon  this  right,  except  those 
which  depend  on  condition  only,  are  the  results  of  express 
enactment.  It  was  no  question,  therefore,  of  grace  or  favor 
or  indulgence,  and  it  cannot,  of  course,  be  said  in  excuse  for  the 
prohibition,  that  it  was  not  competent  for  the  Executive  to  con 
fer  the  privilege  on  this  particular  class.  It  was  not  his  to 
confer  on  anybody,  either  white  or  black.  If  he  had  left  the 
election  to  the  citizens  who  owed  allegiance,  paid  taxes,  and 
were  subject  to  bear  arms,  they  must  have  voted  without  dis 
tinction  of  color.  The  only  question  was — not  whether  he  could 
confer  it — but  whether  he  could  take  it  away.  He  has  taken  it 
away  from  others — from  all  who  were  not  qualified  under  the 
old  constitutions,  and  from  all  who  are  disloyal,  or  refuse  the 
oath  to  support  the  laws  and  proclamations  in  regard  to  slavery. 
The  old  governments  with  their  black  codes,  which  were  the 
Iruitful  nurseries  of  treasonable  sentiment,  and  have  destroyed 
themselves  by  hurrying  their  people  into  the  rebellion,  are 
allowed  to  furnish  the  rule  and  standard  of  electoral  fitness,  on 
the  hypothesis  that  there  is  something  left  of  them  that  still 
lives,  like  the  tail  of  a  defunct  reptile  after  the  very  life  has 
been  crushed  out  of  its  body,  and  are  only  to  undergo  alteration 
and  repair  at  the  hands  of  the  same  cunning  workman  who  had 
destroyed  their  machinery  altogether.  It  is  the  same  class  pre 
cisely  that  is  to  renovate  the  work.  True,  it  is  with  the  condi 
tion  of  loyalty,  and  a  new  oath,  superadded.  But  what  are 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         585 

these  ?  Who  are  the  loyal  ?  Not  certainly  those  who  committed 
treason  against  the  nation  by  waging  war  against  it,  or  giving 
aid  and  counsel  to  its  enemies?  But  if  they  are  excluded,  who 
are  to  be  the  voters,  when  the  only  class  that  proved  true  to  its 
allegiance,  is  precisely  the  one  which  was  excluded  under  the 
old  regime  that  it  is  now  sought  to  restore?  How  many  of  the 
original  voters,  beyond  those  who  were  driven  into  exile,  have 
stood  by  the  old  flag  in  the  hour  of  our  trial?  Was  it  a  majority 
— was  it  even  a  tithe  ?  Can  there  be  as  many  such  men  found  as 
would  have  saved  Sodom  from  destruction  ?  We  know  that  there 
cannot,  because  we  know  that  they  would  not  have  been  toler 
ated  on  southern  soil.  We  know  it,  too,  from  the  declaration 
of  the  Governor  of  Virginia,  that  unless  the  law  that  disfranchised 
the  traitors  only  from  January,  1864,  was  repealed,  there  would 
not  be  men  enought  left  to  organize  the  State.  And  is  it  seri 
ously  proposed  that  the  power  of  erecting  governments,  in  order 
to  enable  these  States  to  resume  their  places  in  the  Union,  shall 
be  vested  in  a  score  of  men  out  of  a  population  counting  by 
millions?  But  how  is  the  question  of  loyalty  to  be  determined? 
Not  by  the  oath,  because  that  is  merely  cumulative,  and  is  not 
offered  either  as  a  test,  or  by  way  of  purgation  for  past  offenses. 
If  as  a  test,  the  word  might  as  well  have  been  omitted  altogether. 
How  then?  Is  there  a  virtue  in  the  amnesty  which  works  not 
only  oblivion  for  the  past,  but  converts  a  pardoned  traitor  into 
a  loyal  man?  Is  it  by  judgment  of  law  on  conviction  of  crime? 
Is  it  by  attainder  on  proclamation  by  the  Executive?  Is  it 
by  a  trial  in  pais  or  by  compurgators  at  the  hustings?  If  the 
old  constitutions  are  still  in  force,  either  by  construction  of  law 
or  by  virtue  of  the  proclamations,  the  exclusion  even  of  those 
who  may  be  impeached  of  disloyalty,  looks  amazingly  like  the 
forfeiture  of  a  legal  franchise,  without  judgment  and  without 
law,  and  is  too  high  a  power  to  be  exercised  by  any  other  than 
the  sovereign. 

"But  there  is  another  condition  superadded,  by  way  of 
abridgment  of  the  right ;  and  that  is  the  exaction,  even  from 
the  loyal,  of  the  oath  to  support  the  proclamations  and  laws 
relating  to  slavery.  No  friend  of  the  country  will  of  course 
object  to  any  wholesome  limitations  upon  the  privilege;  but  if  it 
was  not  competent  to  the  President — not  to  confer,  but  only  to 
permit  it — -to  the  black  man,  what  authority  was  there  to  limit 
it  in  this  way  to  the  white  man?  Neither  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  nor  that  of  any  of  the  States,  has  ever 
required  an  oath  of  this  sort  from  the  voter.  If  he  could 
impose  this,  what  was  there  to  prevent  him  from  swearing  them 
to  the  observance  of  all  acts  of  Congress  and  all  proclamations, 


586  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

or  requiring  them  to  swear  that  they  had  never  given  any  aid 
or  countenance  to  the  rebellion  ?  If  he  could  disfranchise  the 
unconvicted  traitor,  what  was  there  to  prevent  him  from  enfran 
chising  the  loyal  man  who  has  become  free?  But  what  is  the 
security  which  it  furnishes?  How  long  is  the  obligation  to 
endure?  Did  it  bind  the  members  of  the  conventions?  And 
if  these  bodies  have  defined  the  qualification  in  a  different  way, 
are  the  voters  now  free? 

"The  programme  is  in  effect  to  recommit  these  governments 
to  the  hands  of  the  very  men  who  hurried  them  into  the  rebel 
lion,  upon  the  sole  condition  of  a  new  obligation  of  fealty,  after 
having  just  broken  a  previous  one,  and  to  abandon  the  field  to 
the  conquered  as  soon  as  it  is  won !  Was  ever  such  a  denouement 
to  such  a  drama  ?  But  is  there  anybody  in  the  loyal  States,  who 
is  willing  to  release  all  the  securities,  all  the  rights  and  advan 
tages  acquired  by  the  war,  and  prescribe  no  terms  to  those 
whose  lips  have  just  been  dyed  with  perjury,  and  whose 
hands  are  still  dripping  with  the  blood  of  our  butchered  sons, 
except  a  renewal  of  their  already  broken  vows,  which  they  will 
make  voluntarily,  and  then  claim  to  have  no  binding  force 
because  they  have  been  made  under  a  sort  of  duress,  on  the 
ethics  taught  by  a  distinguished  casuist  of  Maryland?  What 
kind  of  a  test  is  this  for  a  statesman?  Would  any  rational 
Government  on  earth  be  content  with  such  a  caution  ?  Who  does 
not  know  its  utter  worthlessness?  What  is  it  but  the  flaxen  tie 
that  bound  the  wrists  of  the  Hebrew  champion?  What  is  its 
value,  in  view  of  the  events  of  the  rebellion  that  have  now  passed 
into  history?  How  is  our  past  experience?  Have  these  people 
ever  kept  faith  with  us?  Did  it  hold  any  of  the  rebel  leaders 
who  filled  employments  either  civil  or  military  under  the  Fed 
eral  Government,  or  under  those  of  the  revolting  States?  Was 
not  perjury  exalted  into  honor  of  the  highest  chivalric  type; 
children  taught  by  their  own  Southern  mothers,  that  they  were 
under  no  obligation  to  keep  faith  with  Yankees,  and  that 
they  might  swear  and  forswear  themselves  again  and  again,  to 
save  their  persons  or  their  property ;  and  the  very  highest  species 
of  the  crimen  falsi  canonized  even  by  the  tender  and  admiring 
regards  of  Northern  generals  and  Northern  statesmen?  It  may 
be  safely  assumed,  as  a  general  proposition,  that  those  who  were 
most  forward  to  abjure  their  sworn  allegiance  here,  will  be  the 
first  to  violate  their  new-made  vows,  by  swearing  themselves 
back  again  into  legislative  honors  and  governmental  favors.  But 
will  you  consent  to  turn  over  the  few  Union  white  men,  and  your 
thousands  of  faithful  allies  among  the  blacks,  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  these  unconverted  and  unrepentant  rebels,  and  bring 


587 

them  back  again  into  these  Halls,  on  pledges  of  fidelity  that 
amount  at  last  to  no  more  than  an  engagement  not  to  repeat  an 
experiment,  against  which  you  will  now  want  no  other  security 
than  the  recollection  of  your  power?  If  you  are  wise  you  will 
not  be  content  with  any  assurances  that  are  either  purchased 
by  interest,  or  extorted  by  necessity.  You  will  render  it  impos 
sible  for  them,  to  deceive  you  again,  by  refusing  to  trust  them, 
until  they  shall  have  re-established  their  title  to  your  confidence. 
Security  is  more  important  to  you  than  punishment,  ay,  even 
than  the  demands  of  justice.  Others  may  do  as  they  please, 
but  as  for  me,  I  must  beg  to  be  excused  from  giving  my  faith 
to  these  new-fledged  neophytes — these  unbaptized  renegades — 
until  they  have  stripped  to  the  skin,  and  bathed  themselves 
thoroughly  in  the  waters  of  regeneration. 

"But,  supposing  this  guarantee  be  a  merely  executive  func 
tion,  how  does  the  manner  of  performance  square  with  the 
object  sought  to  be  attained?  The  obligation  is  to  assure  a 
government  that  shall  be  republican.  The  meaning  of  this  is 
that  it  shall  be  a  government  of  the  people.  The  process 
adopted,  in  direct  contravention  of  the  principles  of  the  mes 
sage,  is  to  lodge  the  power  in  the  hands  of  a  privileged  class — 
the  same  that  held  it  before — distinguishable  only  by  the  acci 
dent  of  color,  along  with  a  disloyalty  to  the  Union  that  was 
almost  universal,  and  composing,  in  some  instances,  a  minority 
of  the  whole  population.  Does  this  look  like  a  fulfillment  of 
the  obligation,  or  even  squint  in  that  direction?  The  form,  it 
is  true,  may  be  republican,  because  it  looks  to  representation  by 
election.  But  that  is  not  the  test.  If  it  were,  every  constitu 
tional  monarchy  in  Europe  might  be  brought  within  the  cate 
gory.  It  is  the  distinction  of  classes — the  permanent  limita 
tion  of  the  right  of  suffrage  to  a  favored  few — that  makes  the 
difference  between  the  aristocratic  and  republican  forms,  and 
there  is  none  other.  In  this  case,  the  right  is  confined  to  the 
loyal  white  man  who  will  take  the  oath.  This,  however,  if  not 
an  oligarchy  or  government  of  the  few,  is  at  least  an  aristocracy 
or  government  of  classes,  and  furnishes  a  perfect  exemplifica 
tion  of  just  that  species  of  legislation,  which  is  so  earnestly 
reprobated  in  those  passages  of  the  message,  where  the  Presi 
dent  informs  us  that  'this  Government  springs  from  and  was 
made  for  the  people ;'  that  'it  should,  from  the  very  considera 
tion  of  its  origin,  be  strong  in  its  power  of  resistance  against 
the  establishment  of  inequalities;'  that  'monopolies,  perpetuities, 
and  class  legislation  are  contrary  to  the  genius  of  a  free  Gov 
ernment,  and  ought  not  to  be  allowed;'  that  'here  there  is  no 
room  for  favored  classes  or  monopolies;'  and  that  'we  shall 


588  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

fulfill  our  duties  as  legislators,  by  according  equal  and  exact 
justice  to  all  men,  special  privileges  to  none.'  If  I  have  found 
occasion  to  commend  his  practice,  at  the  expense  of  his  theory, 
upon  the  question  of  State  sinlessness  and  State  immortality, 
subscribing  as  I  do  most  heartily  to  these  axioms  of  political 
science,  I  shall  feel  myself  compelled  to  adjust  the  account,  by 
following  his  advice  in  opposition  to  his  practice  here.  'Class 
legislation/  and  'special  privileges'  of  a  sovereign  character, 
are  the  distinguishing  features  of  his  plan,  and  it  is,  therefore,  by 
the  erection  of  an  aristocracy,  that  the  guarantee  of  a  republic 
is  to  be  made  good ! 

"Whether  these  States  be  in  the  Union  or  not,  it  is  conceded 
by  the  Executive,  in  the  effort  to  provide  them  with  republican 
governments,  that  they  are  now  without  them;  and  this,  I  sup 
pose,  for  the  reason  that  they  have  no  governments  at  all.  The 
same  result,  however,  would  have  followed  from  the  change 
in  the  condition  of  the  slave.  A  Government  that  not  only 
denies  to  a  majority,  or  even  a  large  portion  of  its  free  citi 
zens,  the  privilege  of  any  share  in  its  administration,  but  rejects 
their  testimony  as  witnesses,  interdicts  to  them  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge,  or  refuses  the  advantages  of  the  marital  relation, 
is  not  republican,  and  the  men  who  have  made  these  laws,  and 
insist  on  maintaining  them  now,  will  never  make  it  so.  Mr. 
Burke  remarks  that,  taking  the  State  to  mean  'the  whole  com 
monwealth,  with  all  its  orders,  and  all  the  rights  appertaining 
to  each,'  'to  be  under  the  State,  but  not  the  State  itself,  or  any 
part  of  it — that  is,  to  be  nothing  at  all  in  the  commonwealth — 
is  a  condition  of  civil  servitude  by  the  very  force  of  the  defini 
tion.  Servorum  non  est  respublica  is  a  very  old  and  a  very  true 
maxim.  The  servitude  that  makes  men  subject  to  a  State, 
without  being  citizens,  may  be  more  or  less  tolerable  from  many 
circumstances,  but  these  circumstances  do  not  alter  the  nature 
of  the  thing.'  And  this  he  regards  as  a  modified  form  of 
slavery;  while  'the  exclusion  of  whole  classes  of  men  from  the 
higher  or  ruling  part  of  the  commonwealth,  as  in  the  case 
where  a  hereditary  nobility  possesses  the  exclusive  rule,  is  only 
held  to  imply  a  lower  and  degraded  state  of  citizenship.  But 
even  there  it  is  only  the  office,  and  not  the  franchise,  that  is 
denied  to  the  subject.' 

"  'Our  constitution/  he  continues,  'was  not  made  for  great, 
general,  or  prescriptive  exclusions.  Sooner  or  later  it  will 
destroy  them,  or  they  will  destroy  the  constitution.  In  our  con 
stitution  there  has  always  been  a  difference  between  a  franchise 
and  an  office,  and  between  the  capacity  for  the  one  and  for  the 
other.  Franchises  are  supposed  to  belong  to  the  subject  as  a 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         589 

subject,  and  not  as  a  member  of  the  governing  part  of  the  State. 
The  policy  of  the  Government  has  considered  them  as  things 
very  different;  for  when  Parliament  excluded  by  the  test  acts 
Protestant  dissenters  from  all  civil  and  military  employment, 
they  never  touched  their  right  of  voting  for  members  of  Parlia 
ment,  or  sitting  in  either  House' — both  these  being  treated  by 
him  as  franchises  of  which  the  subject  could  not  be  deprived.  In 
a  republic,  however,  there  is  no  proper  distinction  between 
the  governing  part  and  the  subject,  and  the  office,  of  course, 
would  stand  on  the  same  ground  as  the  franchise. 

"An  American  statesman  of  the  present  day  would  say,  per 
haps,  that  the  elective  franchise,  the  most  important  of  them  all, 
is  not  the  property  of  the  citizen,  because  it  is  not  a  natural 
right,  but  a  political  one.  I  have  heard  such  language  here, 
even  on  this  side  of  the  House,  again  and  again.  I  am  too  dull 
to  comprehend  the  distinction.  I  take  it  that  all  governmental 
agencies,  all  political  contrivances  and  privileges,  are  but  the 
machinery  for  the  protection  of  the  great  natural  rights  of 
humanity,  which  protection  is  admitted  by  the  Declaration  itself 
to  be  the  only  legitimate  object  of  all  government.  Why  are 
our  institutions  free?  Because  they  allow  to  you  and  me  the 
privilege  of  governing  ourselves.  Why  am  I  a  freeman?  For 
no  other  reason  than  because  I  am  armed  with  the  ballot  for 
my  own  protection  as  a  citizen.  Strip  me  of  that  and  I  am  at 
your  mercy.  You  may  deal  gently  with  me,  it  is  true — and  so 
might  the  Sultan  of  Turkey — but  that  makes  no  difference.  I  am 
still  the  slave  of  your  caprice,  and  my  rights  and  happiness  may 
depend,  like  your  temper,  on  the  state  of  your  digestion.  You 
may  designate  this  franchise  by  what  name  you  please,  but  you 
cannot  refine  it  away  by  verbal  distinctions  or  scholastic  subtle 
ties — by  calling  it  political  or  giving  to  it  any  other  nomencla 
ture.  You  might  as  well  deny  me  all  the  rights  of  a  citizen, 
because  they  are  all  political,  as  deny  me  that  one — the  most 
important  of  them  all — which  is  essential  to  the  protection  of  the 
residue.  Nor  can  you  pilfer  it  from  me  by  the  jugglery  of 
assigning  to  it  the  distinction  of  a  prerogative  or  privilege.  I 
know  no  prerogatives  here,  and  no  privileges  that  are  not,  or  at 
least  ought  not  to  be  common  to  us  all.  The  message  itself 
reprobates  a  subterfuge  like  this,  when  it  asserts  the  great 
republican  idea  of  'equal  rights  for  all,  special  privileges  to 
none.'  No:  you  must  either  settle  the  principle  that  this  is  a 
white  man's  Government  alone,  or  you  must  share  all  your 
political  rights  with  men  of  all  complexions  who  inhabit  among 
you.  The  Democrats,  par  excellence,  who  love  slavery  for  its 
own  sake,  and  do  not  of  course  favor  the  doctrines  of  either 


590  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

liberty  or  equality  as  to  the  black  man,  accept  the  alternative 
that  this  is  a  white  man's  Government — as  does  the  President 
himself  in  his  one-sided  argument  with  the  dusky  committee 
that  waited  on  him  a  day  or  two  ago,  in  declining  to  answer  as 
to  South  Carolina,  assuming  that  they  are  not  a  portion  of  the 
people,  and  advising  them  to  emigrate  from  the  country  which 
he  had  previously  declared  to  be  their  own — and  are  therefore 
consistent  and  logical  in  denying  the  suffrage  to  the  negro,  as 
they  are  in  favoring  the  policy  that  ignores  the  war,  and  seeks 
to  rehabilitate  the  aristocracy  of  the  South.  I  wish  I  could  say 
as  much  for  the  Union  party  as  a  whole  on  this  floor.  Gentle 
men  of  that  faith  are  without  apology  when  they  agree  with 
them  in  either. 

"The  proclamation  has  made  the  negro  nominally  free.  He 
counts  in  the  representation.  He  pays  taxes,  and  must  bear 
arms  if  necessary,  and  he  has  done  it.  No  sensible  man  now 
pretends  to  doubt  that  he  is  a  citizen,  or  can  doubt  it  in  view 
of  these  considerations.  The  interference  of  the  Executive  is  put 
expressly  on  the  ground  of  the  obligation  of  the  national  author 
ity  to  secure  a  republican  form  of  government  to  each  of  the 
States.  To  effect  this,  it  is  essential  that  a  majority  should  be 
allowed  to  enjoy  the  political  right  of  governing,  and  that  all 
should  share  alike  in  its  direction.  To  put  any  class  under  the 
State,  would  be  to  deprive  them  of  the  rights  of  citizens,  and 
to  reduce  them,  in  the  words  of  the  authority  just  cited,  to  a 
state  of  civil  servitude.  It  is  essential,  moreover,  that  it  should 
rest,  in  the  language  of  the  Declaration,  on  'the  consent  of  the 
governed.'  An  establishment  that  does  not  conform  to  these 
principles  is  not  republican,  whether  the  power  be  lodged  with 
the  oligoi  or  the  aristoi.  No  matter  as  to  its  forms.  We  are  not 
to  be  cheated  by  appearances  or  names.  It  was  something  more 
than  the  mere  form  that  the  Constitution  intended  to  secure. 
And  yet  the  process  here  ignores  all  these  things,  and  rests 
either  upon  the  dimmest  perceptions  of  free  government,  or 
upon  the  southern  theory  that  the  negro  is  not  a  man,  or  that 
this  Government  was  only  intended  for  white  men.  If  the 
proposition  were  to  exclude  all  men  of  Celtic  blood,  what  a 
sensation  would  it  not  produce  among  the  Democracy?  If  the 
difference,  however,  is  only  against  the  African,  consistency 
would  require  that  he  should  also  be  excluded  from  the  enumer 
ation  hereafter.  With  the  end  of  the  'divine  institution/  the 
three-fifths  clause,  which  stipulated  for  a  representation — not 
of  or  for  him,  who  was  not  then  a  man — but  for  his  master,  has 
•ceased  to  operate.  If  the  freed  slave  is  now  a  citizen,  he  has 
a  right  to  all  the  privileges,  as  he  is  confessedly  subject  to  all 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         591 

the  duties  which  that  relation  involves.  If  instead  of  rising 
from  the  fractional  value  to  that  of  an  integer,  he  is  no  longer 
a  member  of  the  State,  he  must  cease  to  owe  any  other  than 
a  domiciliary  allegiance,  and  the  idea  of  a  representation  founded 
on  his  existence  here,  must  be  exploded  forever.  And  from  this 
dilemma  there  is  no  escape.  If  he  is  a  citizen,  the  elective  fran 
chise  is  his  right.  If  he  is  not,  representation  on  that  basis  is 
logically  inadmissible. 

"The  effect  of  the  oligarchic  process  is  to  reinstate  the 
governing  class  as  it  was  before,  without  any  check  upon  it. 
This  we  cannot  afford  to  do.  There  is,  fortunately  for  us,  a 
loyal  element  among  them,  that  has  helped  us  to  bring  them 
back,  and  may  be  used  to  keep  the  peace — not  by  either  arming 
or  disarming  it — but  by  the  restoration  of  a  mere  right,  which 
is  essential  to  its  protection  as  well  as  our  own.  It  is  a  happy 
circumstance  that  the  measure  of  security  required  by  the  people 
of  the  loyal  States,  is  precisely  that  which  the  Constitution  has 
imposed  on  us  as  a  duty.  The  obligation  is  to  guaranty  to  every 
State  in  this  Union  a  republican  form  of  government.  If  'the 
whole  commonwealth,  comprehending  all  its  orders,  with  the 
privileges  belonging  to  each,'  is  not  republican,  we  are  bound  to 
make  it  so,  and  are  endowed  by  the  Constitution  with  all  the 
powers  necessary  for  that  purpose.  But  how  are  these  powers 
to  be  exercised?  Not  by  the  President,  because  he  cannot  pre 
scribe  the  terms.  Not  by  a  mere  refusal  on  the  part  of  Con 
gress  to  admit,  because  that  would  be  a  refusal  to  perform — 
but  by  an  act  of  legislation,  which  it  will  be  only  the  duty  of 
the  President  to  enforce.  It  is  a  narrow  view  of  this  duty  which 
gives  to  it  a  merely  negative  character,  such  as  to  put  down  a 
usurpation,  or  drive  out  a  tyrannical  majority.  There  is  a  posi 
tive  obligation  to  warrant  or  make  sure  to  all  the  people,  a 
republican  form  of  government;  and  here  is  the  power  that  has 
been  sought  for  so  diligently  under  the  law  of  war,  to  deal  with 
the  conquered  territories  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure  to  all  their 
loyal  people  the  rights  to  which  they  would  be  entitled  under  a 
republican  form  of  government,  and  to  protect  the  Union  itself 
from  all  future  disturbance.  These  States  are  without  govern 
ments  of  any  sort — those  which  existed  and  were  disloyal  having 
been  overthrown.  It  is  our  constitutional  duty  to  supply  them 
with  new  ones  of  a  republican  character,  and  to  provide  that 
none  other  shall  be  erected.  If  their  black  population — if  a 
majority  of  their  loyal  inhabitants — nay,  if  a  mere  minority 
demand  the  fulfillment  of  this  guaranty,  by  insisting  that  we 
shall  provide  them  with  a  government  that  shall  admit  them  to 
the  rights  of  citizenship,  and  be  at  least  partly  within  their 


592  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

own  control,  we  cannot  evade  the  performance  by  the  plea  of 
a  want  of  constitutional  power.  The  declaration  of  the  duty 
gives  it  to  us,  with  all  the  incidental  means.  That  duty 
is  not  denied;  but  we  have  wielded  the  sword  so  long  to 
enforce  the  law,  that  many  people  have  come  to  the  con 
clusion  that  there  is  no  other  weapon  for  such  a  case,  when  in 
point  of  fact  it  is  clearly  inadequate  to  this  part  of  the  work, 
and  the  power  of  the  Legislature  is  the  only  one  that  can  suc 
cessfully  accomplish  it.  It  is  undoubtedly  in  accordance  with 
our  practice,  as  it  is  with  the  spirit  of  our  institutions,  that  it 
should  be  left  to  the  people  themselves,  in  the  first  place,  to 
be  performed  by  them  in  that  condition  of  freedom  which  our 
arms  have  given  them.  But  if  they  will  not  do  this  of  their  own 
accord — if  the  class  that  has  been  accustomed  to  rule,  will  insist 
on  holding  the  rein  and  denying  to  their  fellows,  even  to  a 
respectable  minority  of  them,  the  rightful  privilege  of  citizens 
under  a  republic — I  know  no  possible  way  of  meeting  the  case, 
but  by  interposing  ourselves  and  prescribing  a  fundamental  law 
for  the  occasion.  It  will  not  be  enough,  as  I  have  already 
remarked,  to  refuse  the  Congressmen  who  may  apply  on  terms 
that  are  inadmissible  to  us.  That  would  be  only  a  denial  of 
justice  to  the  disfranchised  which  might  prove  indefinite, 
instead  of  the  fulfillment  of  an  admitted  obligation.  If  there  be 
any  limitation  of  the  right  of  suffrage  it  must  come  from  the 
supreme  authority,  which  is  here.  There  is  no  power  elsewhere, 
and  certainly  none  in  a  society  that  is  yet  in  a  state  of  chaos, 
formless  and  void,  and  with  nothing  but  darkness  brooding  over 
it.  That  authority,  it  is  true,  might  well  disfranchise  individuals, 
such  as  the  traitors  themselves,  for  an  enormous  crime  which 
showed  that  they  could  not  be  safely  trusted  with  so  important 
a  function.  It  could  not,  however,  proscribe  a  whole  class,  com 
prising  a  majority  of  the  loyal  people,  all  native  to  the  soil  and 
impeached  of  no  crime,  merely  because  they  had  black  skins  or 
woolly  hair,  without  violating  the  essential  principles  of  repub 
licanism,  and  laying  the  foundations  of  an  aristocratic  govern 
ment.  No  argument  could  defend  it,  except  on  the  judicial 
hypothesis  that  the  race  so  excluded  had  no  rights  at  all  that  a 
white  man  was  bound  to  respect ;  which  would  be  fatal  of  course, 
as  already  shown,  to  the  whole  principle  of  representation  as 
applied  to  it.  But  this  hypothesis  has  no  foundation  in  our  early 
history  of  practice.  The  founders  of  this  Government  never 
dreamed  of  such  a  distinction.  The  great  charter  of  our  fathers 
had  before  affirmed  the  equality  of  all  men.  It  was  not  race  or 
color,  but  condition,  that  created  the  constitutional  disability. 
The  slave,  of  course,  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 


versus  "RESTORATION"         593 

admitted  to  the  privileges  of  a  citizen,  because  that  would  have 
been  inconsistent  with  his  condition.  Everybody  else  was 
counted,  except  the  Indian  who  paid  no  taxes — an  incarnation, 
by  the  way,  of  the  revolutionary  formula,  stereotyped  on  the 
hearts  of  the  colonists,,  that  condensed  the  causes  of  their 
struggle  into  two  memorable  and  mighty  words.  The  notion 
that  a  taint  of  African  blood,  or  any  diversity  of  complexion, 
was  a  disqualifying  feature,  is  a  purely  modern  invention,  which 
is  but  the  growth  of  that  barbarous  and  unnatural  system  that 
has  debauched  the  moral  sentiment,  and  left  in  many  minds  only 
the  feeblest  conceptions  of  rational  freedom.  The  free  negro 
voted  originally  almost  everywhere.  It  was  a  consequence  only 
of  his  unquestioned  citizenship.  To  admit  him,  it  did  not  require 
a  special  grant,  by  the  insertion  of  the  word  'black'  in  any 
republican  constitution.  To  exclude  him  it  did  require  the 
insertion  of  the  word  'white.'  The  only  color  that  the  framers 
of  the  Constitution  seem  to  have  ostracised  is  the  red.  But  even 
here,  it  excepted  the  tax-payer,  and  was  by  a  designation  of 
race.  They  had  sense  enough  to  know  that  a  principle  of  exclu 
sion  resting  on  so  uncertain  a  basis  as  color,  would  be  unfitted 
for  any  constitution. 

"Apart,  however,  from  the  considerations  already  stated, 
there  are  special  reasons  in  the  present  case  for  insisting  that 
the  guaranty  shall  be  fulfilled  in  good  faith;  and  these  are,  to 
recompense  the  black  man  for  his  unwavering  loyalty  in  the  hour 
of  trial,  to  afford  him  the  means  of  self -protection  in  the  enjoy 
ment  of  the  rights  he  has  so  richly  earned,  and  if  these  are  not 
enough,  to  protect  ourselves  against  any  future  disturbance  from 
the  same  arrogant  and  presumptuous  class  which  has  just  been 
chastised  into  a  decent  respect  for  ourselves,  and  a  reluctant 
submission  to  our  laws. 

"We  began  the  war  by  repelling  the  black  man  and  return 
ing  him  to  his  master ;  by  doing  everything,  in  short,  to  alienate 
him  from  ourselves,  and  prove  to  him  that  he  had  nothing  to 
expect  from  us ;  and  this  was  called  statesmanship !  If  ever  a 
people  deserved  to  be  chastised,  it  was  ourselves,  for  the  ineffa 
ble  baseness  and  fatuity  which  refused  the  aid  of  the  negro,  and 
sent  a  hundred  thousand  white  men  to  die,  rather  than  wound 
the  pride,  or  harm  the  property  of  an  enemy !  We  failed  to 
drive  him  from  our  support  even  by  the  unkindest  usage.  When 
we  plunged  within  the  storm-cloud  that  overhung  the  South, 
and  concealed  everything  from  outside  view,  we  were  not  long 
in  discovering  that  the  white  skin  was  everywhere  synonymous 
with  the  traitor  heart,  and  that  wherever  we  could  meet  a  black 
man  we  were  sure  to  find  a  friend.  He  took  our  soldier  by  the 


594  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

hand,  led  him  through  the  outposts,  pointed  out  the  secret  path, 
traveled  with  him  by  night,  shared  his  last  crust  with  him,  and 
baffled  the  bloodhounds  that  were  on  his  track.  As  the  war  pro 
gressed,  we  began  to  find  that  with  such  an  auxiliary  against 
us,  success  was  impossible.  We  made  him  free.  But  still  we 
could  not  lift  him  into  the  position  of  a  soldier,  which  was  a 
privilege  of  caste  in  ancient  times.  People  who  foresaw  that 
the  step  was  an  easy  one  from  the  soldier  to  the  citizen — them 
selves  of  craven  hearts  and  more  slaves  than  he — insisted  that 
he  was  like  his  detractors,  loved  his  chains,  and  was  a  coward 
by  instinct,  and  that  the  white  soldier  was  a  fool,  who  would 
throw  down  his  arms  if  you  sent  him  an  auxiliary  whose  skin 
was  not  quite  as  fair  as  his  own.  You  listened  and  believed. 
But  by  and  by,  impelled  by  necessity,  you  allowed  your  brave 
and  right-thinking  Secretary  of  War  to  arm  him  quietly.  You 
rather  winked  at,  than  encouraged  it;  and  before  long  the  truth 
blazed  upon  you  from  the  trenches  of  Port  Hudson  that  the 
black  man  was  in  your  ranks.  He  has  now  added  to  the  title 
that  God  Almighty  gave  him,  a  claim  upon  your  gratitude.  How 
do  you  propose  to  pay  it? 

"Nothing  is  clearer  than  that  you  have  made  the  privilege 
of  the  ballot  necessary  for  his  protection,  by  making  him 
nominally  free,  and  using  him  to  put  down  the  rebellion  of  his 
master.  That  master  will  not  soon  forget  the  infidelity  of  the  slave 
on  whom  he  relied,  or  the  humiliation  that  the  proud  chivalry 
has  suffered  at  the  hands  of  its  own  born  thralls.  Even  the 
bond  of  interest  that  compelled  him  to  treat  that  slave  with 
kindness,  because  he  was  his  money,  is  now  broken.  Unable 
to  wreak  his  baffled  vengeance  upon  you,  he  longs  to  pay  back 
the  debt  he  owes  you,  by  visiting  his  impotent  malice  upon  the 
humble  instrument  of  your  triumph,  and  proving  to  the  world 
the  truth  of  what  he  has  so  often  told  it,  that  you  have  only 
made  his  condition  worse  by  elevating  him  to  freedom.  He  begs 
you  to  withdraw  your  black  troops.  He  wishes  to  be  relieved 
from  your  authority,  by  being  allowed  to  resume  his  place  in 
the  Union  which  he  hates.  For  this,  he  is  willing  to  recognize 
the  results  of  the  war  in  the  nominal  emancipation  of  the  slave, 
if  you  will  leave  him  subject  to  his  authority,  without  rights  of 
citizenship,  and  without  any  security  for  the  practical  enjoy 
ment  of  the  liberty  you  have  given  him.  He  can  afford  to  make 
this  offer,  and  others,  which  the  Executive  hails  as  unexpected 
evidence  of  progress — because  he  cannot  help  it.  The  only  sur 
prise  to  me  is,  that  on  such  an  invitation  the  whole  South  did 
not  rush  incontinently  into  the  executive  embrace.  But  will  you 
accept  it?  If  you  do,  what  is  your  gift  of  freedom  to  the  black 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         595 

man?  It  is  but  'the  Dead  sea  fruit,  that  tempts  the  eye  but 
turns  to  ashes  on  the  lips.'  What  will  you  have  done  for  'the  ward 
of  the  Republic/  as  he  was  characterized  by  our  generous  and 
noble-minded  martyr  President,  if  he  is  to  pass  into  the  condi 
tion  of  a  Pariah,  and  to  accept  such  terms  as  his  humbled  and 
exasperated  master  may  impose  on  him?  You  will  only  have 
mocked  him  with  the  mirage  of  liberty  to  make  his  condition 
tenfold  worse  than  it  was  before.  Is  this  the  fulfillment  of  your 
plighted  faith?  Was  it  your  purpose  only  'to  keep  the  word  of 
promise  to  the  ear,  and  break  it  to  the  hope  ?'  It  was  the  very 
refinement  of  cruelty  to  have  inspired  such  hopes,  only  to  disap 
point  them.  Better,  far  better,  have  left  the  miserable  victim 
of  your  guile  to  the  slavery  in  which  you  found  him,  content, 
perhaps,  with  his  condition,  and  dreaming  of  no  change,  than 
thus  to  lift  him  from  the  earth,  only  to  dash  him  down  again 
under  the  feet  of  his  oppressor.  Better  for  yourselves,  too — for 
your  present  credit  and  your  future  fame — if  you  had  declined 
his  services  altogether.  The  world,  in  that  case,  would  only 
have  regarded  us  as  fools.  It  will  now  justly  point  its  finger  of 
scorn  at  the  Government  which  was  capable  of  the  meanness  of 
turning  its  back  on  the  benefactor  to  whom  it  appealed,  and 
appealed  successfully,  in  the  hour  of  its  sore  distress.  What  is 
this  but  trusting  the  lamb  to  the  vulture?  Will  the  governing 
class,  to  whose  tender  mercies  you  are  expected  to  turn  him 
over,  because  they  understand  his  nature  and  his  interests  better 
than  you  do,  ever  suffer  him  to  rise  from  his  degraded  condi 
tion?  What  is  your  experience  already  on  this  point?  What 
earnest,  what  foretaste,  what  assurances  do  these  men  give  you 
of  future  reformation,  even  now  that  the  motives  for  good 
behavior  are  so  exigent  and  overwhelming?  The  condition  of 
the  black  man  as  a  slave  disqualified  him  as  a  witness  against 
the  master  race,  who  were  thus  practically  in  the  exercise  of  a 
power  that  placed  his  person  and  his  life  at  the  mercy  of  his 
paler  brother.  He  is  now  free.  Without  this  privilege,  he  has 
no  rights  that  a  white  man  can  be  compelled  to  respect.  It  is 
essential  to  his  security.  No  court  within  the  wide  area  of 
civilization  would  exclude  him,  or  any  other  man,  from  the  wit 
ness  stand  on  tne  ground  of  race  or  color.  If  admitted,  and 
untruthful,  as  they  insist  he  is,  his  credibility  is  still  a  question 
for  a  jury  of  white  men.  And  yet  with  this  advantage,  this 
badge  of  servitude  is  still  insisted  on,  and  instead  of  closing  the 
courts  of  justice — if  they  deserve  that  name,  where  evidence  is 
excluded  on  system,  and  the  tribunal  of  a  Turkish  cadi  would 
be  ashamed — the  Federal  Government  submits  to  the  humiliating 
necessity  of  withdrawing  all  controversies,  wherever  the  rights 


596  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  a  negro  are  involved — ignoring  those  wherein  his  testimony 
might  be  required  between  white  men — within  a  special  jurisdic 
tion  of  its  own,  while  it  allows  these  people  to  make  constitu 
tions,  just  to  enable  them  to  escape  its  power,  and  do  their  own 
will  in  such  particulars  as  these,  as  though  they  were  really 
free  of  our  rule,  and  could  be  safely  trusted  with  the  perform 
ance  of  such  a  work !  But  how  is  it  in  regard  to  the  marital 
relation,  with  all  its  incidents  ?  How  as  to  education  and  prep 
aration  for  the  ballot?  Have  the  schools  been  thrown  open  to 
him?  Is  he  free  to  work  on  his  own  terms,  to  acquire  property, 
to  go  about  wherever  his  interests  or  inclination  may  lead  him, 
and  to  seek  employment  at  such  wages  as  he  can  fairly  earn — 
or  is  he  still  subject  to  condemnation  as  a  vagrant,  and  sale  or 
apprenticeship  for  fines  and  jail  fees?  What  says  the  official 
report  of  General  Schurz,  the  result  of  a  long  and  extended  tour, 
which  is  so  mysteriously  ignored,  while  in  the  face  of  its  authen 
tic  and  overwhelming  testimony,  the  President  is  relinquishing 
our  blood-bought  conquests  to  the  enemy,  without  even  taking 
the  advice  of  Congress,  though  now  sitting  at  the  capital,  and 
proving  the  tranquillity  of  the  South  by  the  result  of  a  five 
days'  sojourn  in  three  of  its  principal  towns,  which  developed 
the  fact  that  black  troops  could  not  be  employed  to  advantage 
because  it  would  be  necessary  to  accumulate  them  in  large 
bodies  for  their  own  protection  ?  How  is  it  in  Mississippi,  where 
the  local  militia  are  already  stripping  the  negro  of  the  arms 
purchased  from  you  as  cherished  heir-looms — dear  memorials — 
consecrated  by  the  war  of  liberty,  and  stained,  perhaps,  with 
their  own  blood,  spilt  in  your  own  defense,  or  with  the  blood 
of  the  discomfited  barbarians  who  are  now  so  valorously  dis 
arming  them  ?  How  is  it  in  Tennessee  ?  How  in  Virginia  ?  It 
is  not  the  overthrow  of  the  rebellion,  but  of  the  abolitionists 
of  the  North,  that  constitutes  the  inspiring  and  exultant  theme 
of  the  Speaker  of  its  House  of  Delegates.  He  thanks  God  that 
Virginia  can  still  trample  on  the  rights  of  the  black  man, 
because,  as  he  thinks — and  as  the  Executive  thinks  of  all  these 
States — she  has  never  been  out  of  the  Union.  How,  then,  is  the 
condition  of  the  negro  improved  by  emancipation,  under  a 
policy  that  cuts  him  off  from  the  enjoyment  of  all  protection  in 
person  or  property,  and  is  intended  obviously  to  keep  him  in  the 
bonds  of  servitude,  and  to  prove  to  the  world  that  the  real 
victory  is  theirs,  and  that  your  boon  of  freedom  was  only  a 
cheat  and  a  delusion?  What  is  there  to  prevent  the  re-enact 
ment  of  the  whole  black  code  in  any  of  these  States  as  soon  as 
they  shall  have  been  relieved  from  our  control  by  readmission 
into  the  Union  upon  the  terms  of  the  Executive?  If  you  object 


"RECONSTRUCTION''  versus  ''RESTORATION"         597 

— ay,  even  to  the  imprisonment  of  a  northern  seaman — you  will 
be  told  as  formerly,  that  these  are  matters  of  State  regulation 
only.     Will  you  appeal  to  the  courts  or  send  embassadors  to 
Charleston   to   negotiate   an   amicable   submission  ?     They    will 
set  your  courts  at  defiance,  and  drive  you  out  with  scorn  and 
contumely,  as  they  did  before,  and  the  Democracy  of  the  North 
will  clap  their  hands  and  exult  over  your  discomfiture.     Is  the 
peace  of  the  country  to  be  secured  in  this   way?     You  have 
carried  the  cup  of  freedom  to  the  lips  of  the  black  man  and  he 
has  drunk  of  it.     If  you  would  make  of  him  a  peaceful  citizen, 
and  an  obedient  member  of  the  State,  you  must  protect  him  in 
the  enjoyment  of  the  liberty  you  have  given  him.     To  do  this, 
it  is  only  necessary  to  invest  him  with  the  defensive  armor  of 
the  ballot.     That  will  secure  to  him  the  consideration  of  the 
white  man.     That   will   make   it  the   interest  of    the    superior 
classes  to  cultivate  him.     That  will  educate  him  into  an  intelli 
gent  acquaintance  with  his  duties.     That  will  secure  peace  and 
harmony  to  the  land.     The  black  man  has  shown  himself  to  be 
as  docile,  gentle,  and  humane,  as  he  has  approved  himself  loyal 
and  brave.    He  will  make  a  valuable  citizen  if  fairly  dealt  with. 
But  remember !  he  is  a  man,  who  has  tasted  liberty,  and  felt  the 
glow  of  an  unaccustomed  manhood,  as  his  pulse  danced  with  a 
new  inspiration,  when  he  looked  up  at  the  folds  of  your  starry 
banner  on  the  perilous  edge  of  the  battle.     Beware  how  you 
allow  these  men,  who  have  never  yet  learned,  and  never  will 
learn   anything,   to   trample   on   him   now.      The    policy     fore 
shadowed  in  the  proclamations  will  make  only  a  discontented 
people.     It  is  the  slogan  of  battle — the  herald's  denouncement 
of  that  war  of  races,  which  is  so  strangely  apprehended  by  those 
who  urge  the  very  opposite  policy  to  heal  up  a  war  of  sections. 
It  is  the  preparation  for  these  deluded  people  of  a  future,  before 
which  even  the  savage  horrors  of  their  own  revolt  may  pale. 
The  kindred  policy  that  ruled  our  councils  in  the  same  interest 
for   two   long  years — as   it   seems   to   rule    them    now — proved 
fatal   to  the   system   it  was   intended  to   serve,   by   making   its 
preservation  impossible.     It  may  be  that  God  Almighty  intends 
to  finish  His  great  work,  by  giving  a  further  rein  to  the  infernal 
spirit  that  precipitated  these  madmen  into  the  revolt  that  melted 
the  chains  of  their  slaves.    Let  us  see  to  it  that  we  be  not  called 
upon  to  repress  the  outbreak  of  nature,  by  drawing  our  own 
swords  hereafter  upon  our  faithful  allies  in  the  war  of  freedom. 
We  can  prevent  this  now — and  will  if  we  are  wise — by  a  mere 
act  of  justice  that  is  simple  and  reasonable,  and  will  trench  on 
no  man's  rights,  while  it  will  extend  the  area  of  freedom  by  pop 
ularizing  these  governments,  and  bringing  them  at  once  to  the 


598  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

republican  standard  of  the  Constitution.  That  act  is  demanded 
by  considerations  of  the  highest  wisdom,  as  well  as  of  the 
strictest  justice.  It  were  a  foul  shame  to  refuse  it,  and  a  fouler 
still  to  add  to  that  refusal  the  future  possible  infamy,  of  turning 
our  own  arms,  at  the  call  of  these  delinquents,  upon  the  trusty 
auxiliaries  who  have  assisted  in  subduing  them,  when  the 
tyranny  of  their  oppressors,  and  the  instinctive  yearnings  of 
humanity,  may  drive  them  to  resistance.  I  should  blush  for 
my  country — and  weep  for  it  too — if  it  was  capable  of  an  atrocity 
so  unutterably  base. 

"But  though  we  were  even  insensible  to  the  claims  of  jus 
tice  and  the  emotions  of  gratitude,  and  entirely  indifferent  to 
the  elevation  of  the  negro  race  for  its  own  sake,  we  want  their 
vote  for  our  own  protection.  Our  best  security  is  to  erect  a 
breakwater  against  the  encroachments  of  the  disaffected  white 
man,  by  enlisting  the  counteracting  influence — the  cheap  support 
in  peace — of  the  loyal  black  man,  to  whom  we  have  so  success 
fully  appealed  in  war.  We  need  his  suffrage  now  to  assist  us  in 
keeping  that  peace  which  he  had  so  large  a  share  in  mak 
ing.  Take  away  his  musket,  if  you  please,  but  do  not  disarm 
him  entirely.  The  question  with  me  is  not  whether  you  can 
trust  him,  but  whether  you  can  trust  the  man  who  asks 
you  to  give  him  the  rule  again  over  his  rescued  bonds 
man.  There  are  two  classes  of  white  men  in  the  seced 
ing  States.  The  higher  and  more  intelligent  is  essentially 
anti-republican  in  habit  and  sentiment,  while  the  inferior  and 
ignorant  is  even  more  abject  and  servile  than  the  slave  himself. 
He  may  be  educated,  however,  into  a  just  self-respect,  and  a 
sense  of  his  own  interests.  The  governing  class  never  can.  To 
make  them  republican,  you  must  change  their  whole  social  sys 
tem  and  their  natures  along  with  it.  Until  you  do,  and  they  are 
thoroughly  regenerated,  they  will  be  unsafe  depositaries  of 
power  in  a  Government  like  this.  If  you  will  not  disfranchise 
the  man  who  has  already  shown  that  he  is  unworthy  of  trust, 
you  must  at  least  render  him  powerless  for  mischief,  by  placing 
a  sentinel  over  him,  with  the  bloodless  but  potent  weapon  of  the 
ballot,  to  keep  him  in  order.  I  do  not  insist  that  you  shall  dis 
franchise  the  rebel  who  professes  to  have  repented,  because 
without  him  you  will  have  no  white  element  in  the  case.  I  have 
no  objection  that  you  should  pardon  his  crime.,  and  even  restore 
to  him  his  lands,  if  you  think  that  the  interests  of  justice  require 
no  indemnity,  and  no  examples.  My  object  is  not  vengeance. 
I  do  not  thirst  for  his  blood,  even  with  all  his  barbarities.  Give 
him  back  everything  else.  But  for  the  power  which  he  has 
shown  himself  unworthy  to  hold,  and  which  he  has  so  justly 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         599 

forfeited,  restore  not  that,  I  adjure  and  beseech  you,  by  the 
recollection  of  the  bloody  trial  through  which  you  have  passed; 
by  the  respect  you  owe  to  the  bereaved,  the  widowed,  the 
orphaned,  the  maimed  who  yet  live;  and  above  all,  by  the 
memory  of  your  martyred,  butchered,  starved,  and  mutilated 
dead.  Insult  them  not  by  the  declaration  that  the  earth  has 
drunk  their  blood  in  vain.  Expose  not  yourselves  to  the  bitter 
reproach,  that  before  their  bones  have  been  gathered  by  pious 
hands  from  the  fields  where  they  have  been  left  to  bleach 
tmburied,  their  very  murderers  have  been  hurried  back  into  your 
embrace  like  returning  conquerors.  If  this  reunion  is  to  be 
solemnized  on  terms  like  these,  wait  at  least  until  you  have  put 
off  your  mourning,  and  stripped  your  public  places  of  the 
habiliments  of  woe.  Bury  your  murdered  President  out  of  sight. 
Cover  up  the  graves  of  Andersonville,  with  all  their  horrid 
secrets,  and  then — then  celebrate  these  unholy  nuptials — if  you 
can.  Let  it  not  be  said,  at  all  events,  to  your  discredit,  that  'the 
funeral-baked  meats  have  coldly  furnished  forth  the  marriage 
table.'  Open  no  hall  of  Valhalla,  where  the  returning  braves 
of  the  South  shall  quaff  their  foaming  ale,  and  pledge  you  from 
the  grinning  skulls  of  your  own  dead  and  forgotten  heroes. 

"But  there  is  another  consideration  that  gives  us  the  right, 
and  makes  it  an  imperative  necessity,  for  our  own  protection,  to 
insist  that  the  negro  shall  be  allowed  to  share  the  rights  of 
citizenship  in  their  highest  sense,  and  that  is  the  fact  that  the 
conversion  of  the  chattel  into  a  freeman  will  greatly  enlarge  the 
representation  of  those  States,  and  bring  into  Congress  some 
thirty  votes  on  the  basis  of  this  peculiar  population,  while  the 
loyal  States  must  suffer  from  the  increase.  If  they  come,,  it 
must  be  in  a  representative  capacity  of  course.  But  whose  rep 
resentatives  will  they  be,  if  the  whole  class  in  whose  names  they 
come,  and  for  whom  they  profess  to  speak,  is  to  have  no  voice 
in  their  election?  To  call  them  representatives  of  any  other 
than  the  ruling  class,  would  be  a  gross  abuse  of  language.  The 
benefit  of  your  act  of  emancipation  then  is  to  inure  to  the  master 
who  has  endeavored  to  break  up  your  Government,  while  the 
black  man  still  holds  substantially  the  relation  of  a  slave,  and 
is  only  used  to  count  for  the  benefit  of  his  oppressors !  And 
whom  will  they  send  to  manage  the  affairs  of  the  Union  in  the 
name  of  the  slave?  Will  it  be  the  man  whom  he  would  select 
himself?  Will  it  be  an  advocate  of  his  interests?  Will  it  be 
those  who  will  provide  for  the  payment  of  the  debt  of  the  war, 
or  the  pension  pledged  to  the  families  of  the  brave  soldiers  whose 
very  bones  will  be  spurned  aside  with  contumely  by  the  rebel 
plowman?  What  is  our  experience  thus  far?  Among  the  first 


6OO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

men  sent  here  from  Louisiana,  was  a  signer  of  the  secession 
ordinance,  and  all  three  gravitated  at  once,  as  by  a  natural  law, 
into  the  ranks  of  the  party  that  opposed  the  war.  The  first 
offering  from  Arkansas  to  the  other  end  of  the  Capitol  was  a 
graduate  of  the  same  school.  But  will  the  holders  of  our  public 
debt — will  our  brave  volunteers  agree  to  this  ?  No !  Ask  the 
men  here,  however,  who  sympathized  with  the  rebellion  through 
out,  and  denounced  the  war,  and  the  debt  made  by  it,  as  alike 
unlawful,  and  though  professing  to  be  Democrats,  they  will 
answer  with  one  voice  that  this  representation  by  proxy  is  right 
and  proper,  although  they  do  not  even  admit  the  negro  to  be  a 
citizen,  and  hardly  confess  him  to  be  a  man.  While  he  con 
tinued  a  slave,  there  was  nothing  unreasonable  in  the  agreement 
that  the  master  should  speak  for  him,  if  he  was  to  be  heard  at 
all,  because  he  could  have  no  will  of  his  own.  It  was  at  all 
events  the  bargain,  and  we  stood  by  it.  That  slave  is  now, 
however,  a  freeman.  He  has  a  will  of  his  own,  and  the  man 
who  owned  him  no  longer  represents  it,  but  the  contrary.  Look 
ing  to  his  present  relations  to  the  late  slave,  his  assumption  of 
the  right  to  speak  for  him,  is  a  double  outrage  on  the  black 
man.  It  is  not  only  to  deny  him  a  representative,  but  to  give 
that  office  to  his  enemy.  It  is  in  effect  to  re-enslave  him. 

"If  the  white  man  of  the  South  is  of  the  opinion  that  the 
negro  is  not  fit  to  vote  at  home,  he  decides  at  the  same  time  that 
he  is  not  worthy  to  be  represented  here;  and  in  claiming  that 
right,  asks  for  himself  a  power  in  the  Government  that  will  make 
one  unrepentant  traitor  the  equal,  in  many  instances,  of  two  or 
three  loyal  northern  men.  He  admits  the  injustice,  too,  while  he 
preserves  his  consistency,  by  rejecting  the  negro  himself  in  the 
interior  apportionment  of  some  of  his  own  States.  But  is  it  just 
to  the  loyal  States  that  he  should  exercise  this  power  in  the 
Federal  Government?  Will  they  consent  to  this  inequality,  now 
that  the  remedy  is  in  their  own  hands?  Are  these  people  to  be 
rated,  in  their  condition  of  subjugation,  at  their  own  estimate 
before  putting  their  armor  on,  as  having  vindicated  their  claim 
to  be  considered  the  master  race,  and  so  outweigh  twice  or  thrice 
their  number  of -northern  mudsills?  Speaking  for  myself,  I  do 
not  choose  to  have  my  delegated  powers,  as  the  Representative 
of  one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  northern  freemen,  neutral 
ized  by  a  representative  of  this  sort,  whether  he  come  here  by 
the  conge  d'  elire  of  a  military  commander,  or  is  puffed  in  this 
direction  by  the  arrogant  breath  of  a  feeble  but  aristocratic  con 
stituency.  If  the  white  men  of  the  South  will  insist  that  the 
negro  shall  have  no  political  rights  in  the  States,  while  he  is  to 
appear  here  to  claim  a  recognition  at  our  hands,  only  to  add  to 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        601 

the  power  of  the  oligarchy  in  this  Government,  then  I  would 
insist  that  he  shall  appear  here  either  in  person,  or  by  his  attor 
ney,  or  curator,  or  next  friend,  and  not  by  a  guardian  or  trustee 
under  the  appointment  of  his  quondam  master,  which  would  be 
the  sublimest  of  farces.  If  they  are  not  content  with  this,  then 
I  would  say  to  them,  wait  until  by  a  constitutional  amendment 
we  can  offer  you  the  fairer  basis  of  suffrage,  which  will  enable 
you  to  swell  your  numbers  as  soon  as  you  shall  be  prepared  to  do 
justice  to  the  black  man. 

"It  is  insisted,  however,  and  most  especially  by  those  who 
profit  most  by  the  laws  of  naturalization,  and  the  principle  of 
universal  suffrage,  of  which  they  have  therefore  been  the  unvary 
ing  champions,  that  the  negro  is  ignorant,  and  must  be  educated 
before  he  can  be  allowed  to  enjoy  the  privileges  necessary  for 
his  own  protection  as  a  citizen — which  is  to  say,  in  effect,  that 
ignorance  disqualifies  for  freedom,  and  ought  to  make  a  man  a 
slave.  It  may  be  a  question  whether  it  were  not  well  if  that  had 
been  made  a  condition  with  all  men.  But  why  demand  that  of 
the  indigenous  black  man  who  has  been  reared  under  our  insti 
tutions,  and  has  perhaps  shouldered  his  musket  in  their  defense, 
which  is  not  asked  of  the  foreigner  whose  vote  and  sympathies 
have  been  against  us?  Is  he  inferior  in  these  respects  to  the 
Celtic  Irishman  who  holds  the  destinies  of  your  great  metropolis 
in  his  hands  ?  His  instincts  at  all  events — supposing  them  to  be 
his  highest  faculty — have  taught  him  to  take  the  side  of  liberty, 
when  the  savage  who  burned  him  was  exerting  himself  in  the 
interests  of  the  governing  classes  of  Europe,  from  whose  oppres 
sions  he  had  sought  an  asylum  here,  to  overthrow  the  very 
Government  which  had  so  generously  opened  its  arms  to  receive 
him,  and  lifted  him  from  the  dust  into  the  privileges  of  a  citizen. 
I  would  take  that  instinct,  and  use  it  as  a  counterpoise  against 
the  crude,  uninstructed  element  that  comes  to  us  from  abroad. 
I  do  not  fear  that  it  will  fall  under  the  influence  of  the  aristo 
cratic  class  any  more  than  it  did  during  the  war.  The  negro 
will  be  sure  to  look  with  jealousy  and  suspicion  upon  the  task 
master  from  whose  arms  he  has  been  torn,  and  who  will  still 
continue  to  regard  him  as  his  rightful  property.  That  aristoc 
racy,  moreover,  landless  as  it  is  soon  destined  to  be,  under 
another  and  a  better  social  system,  is  sure  to  be  swallowed  up 
ere  long  by  the  upheaval  of  the  lower  stratum,  when  labor,  now 
become  respectable,  shall  assert  its  rightful  supremacy,  and  the 
strong  sinews  of  toil  shall  reclaim  their  lost  inheritance  by 
seizing  upon  the  soil. 

"But  who  are  they  that  make  this  objection?  Only  the 
master  himself  and  his  northern  friends.  If  they  think  so, 


6O2  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

however,  why  do  they  object?  What  harm  can  come  to  the 
lords  from  the  maintenance  of  the  patriarchal  relation,  by  turn 
ing  it  into  a  bond  of  kinship  and  good  offices  that  will  rival  the 
constitution  of  the  Highland  clan?  But  they  do  not  think  so. 
They  affirmed  with  equal  confidence  that  the  negro  would  cleave 
to  his  master,  and  fight  for  him,  if  he  would  fight  at  all;  but  it 
turned  out  to  be  a  mistake,  as  every  man  of  common  sense  knew 
very  well  it  would.  If  the  power  of  the  master  had  been  equal 
to  that  of  the  northern  demagogue,  he  might  possibly  have  taken 
sides  against  the  Government  with  the  same  unanimity  as  the 
imported  Caucasian  who  was  led  as  an  ox  to  the  shambles,  and 
made,  like  a  blind  Samson,  to  lay  his  hands  upon  the  pillars  of 
our  Constitution,  in  that  dark  hour  when  all  the  powers  of  earth 
and  hell  seemed  leagued  together  for  its  destruction.  The  negro 
has  already  solved  that  question  in  a  way  that  shames  even  the 
poor  white  man  of  the  South,  who  is  indeed  obnoxious  to  this 
imputation,  and  from  whose  example  it  might  have  been  plausi 
bly  inferred,  but  for  the  experience  of  this  war,  that  he  would 
have  yielded  to  the  same  influences.  But  what  authority  is  there 
for  the  assertion  that  the  black  man  is  more  ignorant  than  the 
poor  whites  of  the  South  who  delight  in  shooting,  or  the 
imported  patriots  of  the  North  who  gratify  their  equally  savage 
tastes  by  burning  him?  Look  at  the  revelations  of  the  census 
and  see  what  they  declare.  I  venture  to  say  that,  considering 
the  difference  of  condition  and  opportunity,  the  black  man  is  no 
way  the  inferior.  It  is  sufficient,  however,  that  he  has 
proved  intelligent  enough  to  be  loyal,  when  his  highly 
educated  master  was  not  saved  from  treason  by  his 
superior  instruction.  But  who  shall  say  that  this  loyalty  was  the 
fruit  of  ignorance?  Not  those,  certainly,  who  prize  the  repub 
lican  State,  and  think  that  knowledge  is  essential  to  its  preserva 
tion.  Its  chief  advantage  is,  perhaps,  its  felicitous  adaptation 
to  the  general  standard  of  humanity,  in  its  extreme  simplicity  of 
form,  and  the  fact  that  it  requires  so  little  of  the  learning  of 
the  schools  to  govern  it.  It  would  have  perished  in  the  recent 
trial,  if  it  had  been  left  to  the  wisdom  of  its  statesmen.  It 
was  the  uneducated  common  sense — the  reasoning  instinct  only 
— of  its  own  people,  that  saved  it.  God  defend  us  from  the 
statesmen  and  diplomatist  whom  this  revolution  has  evolved ! 

"But  if  the  negro  is  ignorant,  whose  fault  is  it,  and  what 
is  the  remedy  ?  Has  he  not  been  studiously  denied  the  privilege 
which  his  white  and  jealous  Democratic  rival  has  so  largely 
neglected,  of  learning  even  to  read?  And  is  the  slave-owner, 
who  is  responsible  for  this,  to  meet  us  with  the  confession  that 
he  has  purposely  kept  this  man  in  darkness,  because  he  feared 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        603 

that  a  spark  might  fall  upon  his  intellect  that  would  kindle  into 
flame  and  melt  his  chains,  and  then  convert  his  own  inexpiable 
wrong  into  an  argument  against  his  freedom,  and  ask  us  to  wait 
upon  the  education  of  the  man  who  has  just  shown  that  he  is 
better  fitted  for  its  enjoyment  than  himself?  Thank  Heaven! 
it  does  not  require  an  education  in  the  schools  to  make  a  man 
love  liberty.  The  whole  infernal  system  of  black  laws  is  founded 
on  the  dread  of  human  instinct,  and  the  fear  that  the  natural 
struggles  of  humanity,  if  aided  even  by  such  feeble  lights  as 
might  be  accessible  to  him  in  his  condition  of  servitude,  would 
result  in  making  him  a  freeman.  They  are  themselves  a  preg 
nant  confession  that  the  slave  is  gifted  with  powers  and  suscep 
tibilities  that  might  be  awakened  into  mischievous  activity,  and 
cultivated  for  the  highest  duties  of  citizenship  in  a  free  State. 
Whether  the  ignorance  of  the  inferior  class,  either  imported 
from  abroad  or  thus  diligently  cultivated  at  home,  ought  to 
constitute  a  disqualification,  it  is  perhaps  too  late  to  inquire, 
since  the  policy  of  the  country,  shaped  and  fashioned  by  the 
Democratic  party,  has  settled  it  as  a  principle,  that  the  right  of 
self-government  cannot  be  justly  made  to  depend  upon  the  edu 
cation  or  intelligence  of  the  voter.  It  may  be  right,  for  the 
twofold  reason  that  the  love  of  liberty  is  heaven-born,  and  the 
right  to  vote  the  best  educator  of  the  freeman.  If  gentlemen  on 
the  other  side  have  come  now  to  think  differently,  I  have  no  objec 
tion  to  go  back  and  trust  the  suffrage  only  to  those  who  can 
read  and  write,  and  have  been  long  enough  among  us  to  under 
stand  our  institutions — to  shake  themselves  loose  from  all  for 
eign  domination — to  unlearn  the  Old  World  ideas  in  which  they 
have  been  reared — and  to  appreciate  the  freedom  which  we 
enjoy.  I  cannot  consent,  however,  that  one  rule  shall  be  applied 
to  the  imported  Celt,  and  another  to  the  home-bred  African. 
The  right  to  freedom  is  not  a  question  of  either  race  or  color, 
but  the  common  inheritance  of  humanity.  There  are  no  aris 
tocracies  in  God's  providence  but  that  of  understanding,  which 
is  not  transmissible  by  descent,  and  is  the  appanage  of  no  par 
ticular  race  or  class  of  men.  I  do  not  mean  to  say — for  I  am  no 
fanatic — that  the  negro  race  is,  upon  the  whole,  the  equal  of  the 
white  one  in  this  particular,  any  more  than  I  would  affirm  that 
any  one  white  race  is  equal  to  any  other,  or  that  all  the  white 
races  are  equally  fitted  for  the  task  of  self-government.  That  is 
a  proposition  which  no  man  can  confidently  affirm,  in  view  of 
the  past  history  and  present  condition  of  the  world,  but  yet  it 
involves  no  question  as  to  the  natural  aspirations — which  are 
only  inspirations — of  man  for  freedom,  or  his  right  to  its  enjoy 
ment.  If  I  am  to  choose,  however,  between  these  two  elements, 


604  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

I  would  take  the  black  man,  upon  the  evidence  of  the  last  few 
years,  and  reject  the  equally  ignorant  white,  who  is  so  debauched 
as  even  to  love  slavery — who  allows  his  very  instincts  to  be 
smothered — and  who  submits  his  conscience  and  his  understand 
ing  to  a  direction  whose  dominion  rests  upon  the  same  profound 
and  sagacious  policy  that  has  locked  up  the  treasures  of  knowl 
edge  from  the  black  man.  Everybody  must  have  been  struck 
with  the  marvelous  unanimity  with  which  both  these  elements 
arranged  themselves,  though  on  opposite  sides,  in  the  late  con 
test.  When  men  begin  to  reason  for  themselves  they  are 
almost  sure  to  differ.  'Instinct/  says  Mr.  Burke,  'when  under 
the  guidance  of  reason  is  always  right.'  If  it  was  instinct,  how 
ever,  that  led  the  black  man  in  the  one  direction,  it  was  some 
thing  other  than  reason  that  herded  his  jealous  rivals  into  one 
solid  mass  in  the  other. 

"But  it  has  been  objected  in  some  quarters,  that  if  the  negro 
is  endowed  with  the  power  of  the  ballot,  he  will,  under  the 
guidance  of  the  same  instinct,  combine  with  his  fellows  to  seize 
the  governments  of  the  rebel  States  into  his  own  hands.  This 
argument  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  one  which  I  have  just  exam 
ined,  and  while  the  other  has  only  been  invented  as  an  apology 
for  refusing  the  ballot  by  those  who  had  no  fears  of  the  master's 
influence,  has  not  perhaps  been  without  its  weight  upon  both  the 
northern  and  the  southern  mind.  Nobody  can  doubt  that  in  this 
latitude  at  least,  there  is  a  morbid  apprehension  of  what  is  called 
negro  equality,  but  really  means  negro  superiority;  and  it  is 
perhaps  not  unnatural,  that  now  that  the  negro  has  shown  that  he 
will  fight,  the  men  who  flinched  from  that  ordeal  in  the  hour  of 
our  danger,  or  even  those  who  have  been  driven  like  cattle  into 
the  armies  of  the  oligarchy,  should  dread  the  comparison,  and 
feel  that  there  was  nothing  now  but  the  denial  of  the  ballot  to 
prevent  the  black  man  from  asserting  his  natural  superiority 
over  themselves.  This  apprehension  supposes,  however,  a  powrer 
of  combination  and  forecast,  without  even  the  stimulus  of 
oppression  on  his  part,  which  is  anything  but  consistent  with 
the  idea  so  studiously  inculcated  of  his  incorrigible  inferiority, 
and  surrenders  all  that  has  been  affirmed  by  philosophers  and 
divines  in  regard  to  his  normal  condition,  while  it  admits  that 
even  the  higher  culture  of  the  white  man  would  give  him  no 
advantage  in  the  contest.  But  in  the  few  cases  where  the 
blacks  are  in  a  majority  the  difference  in  numbers  is  small.  If 
it  cannot  be  overcome  by  the  superior  training  of  the  white  man, 
then  the  ability  of  the  negro  and  his  consequent  title  to  com 
mand,  are  established  by  the  highest  possible  test.  But  in  a 
quarrel  of  races  what  is  to  become  of  the  mulatto  ?  If  the  least 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        605 

perceptible  infusion  of  negro  blood,  the  very  faintest  suspicion 
of  a  twist  in  the  hair,  is  sufficient  to  authorize  us  to  deprive  our 
unfortunate  hybrid  cousin  of  all  participation  in  the  Govern 
ment,  what  assurance  is  there  that  the  Caucasian  flush  will  not 
prove  equally  fatal  on  the  other  side?  History  teaches  us  that 
this  distinction  is  as  likely  to  prevail  as  the  other.  But  surely 
the  chivalry,  which  has  held  in  subordination  by  its  superior 
address  the  turbulent  but  submissive  Democracy  of  the  North, 
would  not  shrink  from  the  encounter  in  the  same  field  with  the 
despised  and  degraded  African.  But  the  idea  of  such  a  combi 
nation,  as  the  result  only  of  the  most  generous  treatment,  is 
the  most  extraordinary  of  paradoxes,  if  it  does  not  deserve  to 
be  characterized  as  the  wildest  of  chimeras.  The  people  of  the 
South  will  divide,  as  before,  upon  the  policy  of  the  Government, 
and  struggle,  as  before,  for  the  possession  of  its  offices.  Both 
sides,  of  course,  will  seek  to  propitiate  the  black  man,  because 
he  has  become  a  power  in  the  State,  .and  that  one  which  will 
secure  his  confidence,  and  go  farthest  in  its  professions  of  regard 
for  his  interests,  will  be  sure  to  secure  the  majority  of  his 
votes.  If  he  be  a  child — as  he  perhaps  in  some  sense  truly  is — 
he  will  be  won  by  kindness,  and  ask  nothing  more  than  freedom 
of  locomotion,  protection  to  his  person,  and  the  means  of  enjoy 
ing,  without  molestation,  the  rewards  of  his  own  labor.  Make 
it  the  interest  of  his  late  master  to  cultivate  him.  Give  him  a 
vote,  and  the  'poor  white  trash'  who  despised  him  because  he  was 
a  slave,  will  respect  him  because  he  is  a  sovereign.  If  it  is 
necessary  to  educate  him,  because  he  is  ignorant,  give  him  an 
interest  in  the  Government.  It  is  the  only  school  for  the  adult, 
and  perhaps  the  best  for  all  ages.  The  ripest  thinkers  of  the 
times  are  agreed  that  it  is  a  nursery  of  instruction  that  develops 
the  man  with  wonderful  rapidity,  and  it  is  this  compensatory 
power  that  has  perhaps  served  more  than  anything  else  to 
neutralize  the  evils  of  the  prevailing  system.  To  insist  on  a 
preliminary  education  is  to  begin  at  the  wrong  end.  Leave  him 
for  instruction  in  the  hands  of  his  old  master,  and  you  offer  a 
premium  for  the  continuance  of  the  old  system,  which  kept  him 
in  ignorance  of  his  rights  and  of  his  power.  Knowledge  will 
make  him  more  formidable  than  ever.  So  long  as  he  is  kept 
under  the  State,  and  feels  that  he  is  no  part  of  it,  he  is  sure 
never  to  rise  by  this  process.  The  men  who  control  the  Govern 
ment  will  have  the  same  interest  in  keeping  him  down  as  here 
tofore,  re-enforced  as  it  will  be  by  phantoms  of  terror  that  will 
haunt  their  pillows,  along  with  the  new  feeling  of  resentment 
and  jealousy,  which  his  compulsory  enfranchisement  has  engen 
dered.  Cherish  not  the  delusion  that  any  good  behavior  on  his 


606  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

part  will  ever  secure  for  him  an  admission  to  the  rights  of 
citizenship.  It  is  now  or  never.  There  is  no  case.  I  think,  in 
history,  where  a  privileged  class  has  ever  surrendered  its  pre 
rogatives  to  those  that  were  beneath  it.  Indulge  not  the  hope 
that  you  will  ever  make  of  him  a  contented  subject.  It  is  as 
impossible  with  a  people  so  numerous,  to  maintain  an  intermedi 
ate  grade  between  the  slave  and  citizen,  as  it  is  to  establish  an 
intermediate  variety  in  nature,  or  an  intermediate  condition  here 
between  the  State  and  Territory.  The  black  man  knows  that  he 
is  free.  If  he  asserts  his  right  to  meet  his  fellows  in  council  for 
purposes  which  touch  the  interests  of  his  race,  either  in  this 
world  or  the  next,  the  rumors  of  insurrection  will  load  the 
atmosphere.  The  white  man  will  restrain  his  liberty  by  biting 
statutes  and  relentless  cruelty.  The  black  man  will  rebel,  and 
the  result  will  be  a  chronic  war,  which  will  repel  the  emigrant, 
and  end  in  the  extermination  of  the  weaker  race.  The  ground 
less  panic  that  pervaded  the  South  so  recently  foreshadows  the 
evil  that  is  to  come.  Has  the  kindred  policy  of  the  British 
Government  toward  the  Celtic  Irishman  succeeded  in  conciliating 
his  afi  ection  for  the  English  race  or  nation  ?  If  those  who  favor 
it  here  had  taken  the  trouble  to  look  into  the  cause  of  that  exodus 
that  is  unpeopling  his  ancient  home,  and  flooding  our  shores 
with  its  living  tides,  they  would  have  discovered  that  there  was 
something  more  than  a  war  of  races  to  explain  the  undying 
hatred  with  which  the  Irish  exile  looks  upon  the  Saxon  English 
man,  and  they  would  have  found  its  solution  in  the  very  policy 
which  it  is  now  proposed  to  inaugurate  in  order  to  prevent  a 
war  of  races  in  the  South.  It  is  unnecessary,  however,  to  go  so 
far.  The  recent  bloody  disturbances  in  the  island  of  Jamaica 
are  but  a  type  of  the  social  horrors  which  a  mistaken  deference 
to  its  prejudices  is  preparing  for  that  deluded  people. 

"But  it  is  objected  by  the  President  that  this  is  a  question 
for  the  States  under  the  Constitution,  and  that  the  concession  of 
the  elective  franchise  by  himself  to  the  freedmen  of  the  South, 
must  have  been  extended  to  all  colored  men  wherever  found, 
and  so  must  have  established  a  change  of  suffrage  in  the  North 
as  well  as  in  the  South,,  and  would  have  been  an  assumption 
of  power  which  nothing  in  the  Constitution  or  laws  of  the 
United  States  would  have  warranted. 

"This  argument  assumes,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  default 
ing  States  are  already  in  the  Union,  free  from  the  penalties  of 
crime,  and  with  all  their  rights  and  privileges  as  intact  as  those 
of  their  loyal  sisters.  If  this  be  true,  it  is  not  to  be  questioned 
that  the  right  of  fixing  the  qualifications  of  their  own  voters 
has  been  left,  sub  modo,  with  themselves.  But  how  then,  it 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        607 

will  be  naturally  asked,  did  the  President  himself  acquire  the 
power  of  defining  the  qualifications  of  the  voters  in  the  first 
instance?  If  he  could  do  this — if  he  could  either  abridge  or 
enlarge  the  privilege — and  he  could  as  well  do  one  as  the  other 
— so,  a  multo  fortiori,  could  the  law-making  power  of  this  Gov 
ernment,  in  which  the  sovereignty  resides.  If  he  could  do 
either,  he  might  as  well  have  conferred  the  privilege  on  the  black 
man  as  on  anybody  else.  But  then  he  objects  that  this  must 
have  extended  it  to  all  the  loyal  States,  as  well  as  those  that 
have  rebelled,  which  is  an  assertion  that  his  jurisdiction  has 
attached,  by  virtue  of  the  rebellion  of  the  delinquents,  to  the 
States  that  are  without  sin.  I  am  constrained  to  say  that  this 
is  an  argument  which  I  have  not  been  able  to  comprehend. 
Taking  it,  however,  to  be  true,  as  claimed,  it  must  have  equally 
followed  from  his  summary  disfranchisement  of  the  voters, 
whether  loyal  or  disloyal,  who  might  decline  to  take  the  oath  to 
support  all  proclamations  and  laws  having  reference  to  the 
emancipation  of  the  slave,  that  we  of  the  loyal  States  were 
all  disfranchised,  too,  unless  we  submitted  to  the  same  condi 
tions. 

"Taking  it,  however,  only  in  the  milder  sense  of  a  sugges 
tion,  not  uncommon  in  the  South,  that  the  loyal  States  which 
now  deny  the  suffrage  to  the  black  man,  would  be  either 
expected — to  save  their  own  consistency — or  might  be  com 
pelled  by  Congress  to  conform  to  the  same  rule,  there  is  a  word 
more  to  be  said  in  the  way  of  answer. 

"Whether  these  States  could  be  regarded  as  strictly  repub 
lican,  with  such  a  limitation  of  the  elective  franchise.,  if  the 
necessities  of  the  country  or  the  protection  of  a  numerous  class 
of  citizens  required  the  presentation  of  the  question  to  the  con 
sideration  of  Congress,  is  more  than  doubtful.  The  paucity  of 
the  blacks,  however,  in  the  northern  States,  where  there  is  no 
disposition  to  oppress  them,  and  their  uniform  enjoyment,  with 
out  molestation,  of  every  social  and  civil  right,  without  the  pro 
tection  of  the  political  privilege  of  the  ballot,  has  made  it  a 
question  of  no  practical  importance  to  the  country,  and  led  to 
no  formal  complaint,  although  the  overshadowing  influence  of 
the  slave  power  has  robbed  them,  in  many  of  the  States,  of  that 
privilege  which  the  overthrow  of  slavery  will  sooner  or  later 
restore  to  them.  Whether  their  inherent  right  as  citizens  to 
vote  could  be  enforced  by  an  appeal  to  the  judicial  tribunals  of 
the  country,  upon  the  footing  of  the  constitutional  guaranty,  is 
a  question  which  I  am  not  prepared  to  answer,  and  do  not  care 
to  discuss.  There  is  no  issue  now  as  to  the  loyal  States,  to 
demand  the  consideration  of  Congress.  There  is  none  pending 


608  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

as  to  their  admission  here.  It  is  only  the  criminals  that  are 
at  your  bar — not  asking  pardon,  but  demanding  to  be  restored 
to  power.  They  went  out  to  found  a  slave  empire.  They  still 
think  that  God  and  nature  intended  the  negro  only  for  that  condi 
tion.  He  counts  by  millions  in  the  rebel  States.  He  is  a  freeman 
now.  His  master  is  his  enemy.  He  obviously  intends  to  re-enslave 
him  if  he  can.  He  wants  power  to  enable  him  to  do  it.  The 
negro  wants  protection,  and  has  earned  the  right  to  it,  if  it  was 
not  his  before.  We  want  peace  and  security,  if  not  indemnity 
for  the  past,  and  we  are  sure  that  they  can  be  only  secured  by 
making  these  governments  republican.  They  have  placed  them 
selves  by  their  own  act  in  a  condition  in  which.,  by  the  con 
fession  of  the  President  himself,  it  becomes  our  duty  to  execute 
the  guaranties  of  the  Constitution.  When  we  shall  have  done 
this  work,  it  will  be  time  enough  to  enter  upon  another  that  will 
be  purely  voluntary;  and  if  the  reconstructed  States  shall  insist, 
when  they  are  in  a  condition  to  do  so,  that  we  shall  deal  with 
the  negro  ourselves,  as  we  have  compelled  them  to  deal  with 
him,  I  doubt  not  that  the  justice  of  the  North,  with  its  vision 
purged  by  the  rising  beams  of  universal  liberty,  will  anticipate 
any  action  here,  by  undoing  what  nothing  but  a  base  servility 
to  the  perished  feudalism  of  the  South  could  ever  have  accom 
plished. 

"But  why  hurry  the  return  of  these  States?  Why  under 
take  the  hopeless  and  preposterous  task  of  resorting  not  only 
to  temptation,  but  compulsion,  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  about 
a  reunion  which  can  only  subsist  where  it  is  spontaneous,  and 
can  rest  securely  on  no  other  foundation  than  mutual  respect 
and  good  will?  It  is  a  great  problem,  and  a  difficult  one.  Is 
there  any  immediate  overshadowing  necessity  for  their  reappear 
ance  here?  Is  there  any  adequate  inducement  to  indemnify  us 
for  the  admitted  risks  we  must  incur  from  immature  and  ill- 
considered  action  ?  What  would  be  thought  of  the  sanity  of  the 
man  in  private  life,  who  would  insist  on  hurrying  back  to  his 
embrace  and  confidence  the  unfaithful  partner  who  had  violated 
a  sworn  engagement  of  fidelity,  purloined  his  goods,  fired  his 
dwelling,  and  murdered  a  part  of  its  defenders;  who  instead 
of  yielding  had  only  been  surrendered  by  his  slaves,  or  overtaken 
and  disarmed  by  the  officers  of  justice,  and  had  never  even 
admitted  his  crime,  or  given  one  token  of  repentance?  Is  there 
not  danger  enough  already  in  the  rapid  process  of  disbandment 
and  surrender,  that  has  been  going  on  under  our  own  eyes,  to 
the  terror  of  our  only  loyal  friends,  both  white  and  black,  in  the 
South,  without  reference  to  the  wishes  or  opinions  of  the  people 
or  their  Representatives  here,  and  in  defiance  of  official  infor- 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         609 

mation  collected  by  the  Government  itself  that  the  spirit  which 
inaugurated  and  directed  this  hellish  revolt  was  as  rife  as  ever 
in  the  land,  that  we  should  insist  on  strewing  palm-branches  in 
their  way,  and  inviting  them  to  the  honors  of  a  triumph  at  the 
Capitol  ?  The  President  admits  that  his  policy  'is  attended  with 
some  risk,'  but  excuses  it  by  the  suggestion  that  'it  is  a  risk  that 
must  be  taken.'  This,  I  humbly  think,  is  a  non  sequitur.  It 
was  not  necessary  that  he  should  have  a  policy,  and  a  perilous 
one,  or  that  we  should  take  the  risks  that  are  admitted  to  be 
incidental  to  it.  However  it  may  be  with  the  soldier.,  it  is  not 
out  of  'the  nettle  danger'  that  the  statesman  would  'pluck  the 
flower  safety.'  He  will  take  no  risks  if  he  can  help  it,  and  with 
only  a  rational  treatment  of  this  question,  I  think  they  are 
unnecessary  here.  The  people  of  the  loyal  States,  who  fought 
this  battle,  are  now  in  the  possession  of  the  Government.  They 
may — and  if  they  are  wise  they  will — take  their  own  time  to 
determine  how  they  will  readjust  its  machinery,  and  heal  over 
the  wounds  that  the  war  has  made.  It  is  in  their  power  now  to 
exact  every  possible  security  for  the  future. 

"Why,  then,  this  inexplicable  eagerness  to  surrender  all  the 
advantage  of  our  victory  without  any  security  at  all?  Why 
insist  that  the  overthrow  of  these  rebels  in  the  bloody  arbitra 
ment  to  which  they  have  appealed,  is  to  be  only  the  signal  for 
their  restoration  to  their  former  estate  ?  Is  it  necessary  that  we 
should  constrain  the  reluctant  condescension  of  these  haugKty 
masters,  who  so  lately  spurned  us  as  slaves,  to  the  renewal  of  the 
domination  which  they  had  come  to  loathe  from  a  very  feeling 
of  satiety?  Has  the  attempt  improved  or  mollified  them?  Gen 
eral  Schurz  is  the  witness,  that  the  policy  of  not  only  pardoning, 
but  inviting  the  traitors  themselves  to  reconstruct  their  States, 
has  had  the  worst  possible  effect  upon  them.  And  it  was  but 
natural  that  it  should.  If  they  do  not  despise  us  for  our  weak 
ness  and  our  voluntary  self-abasement,  they  will  be  at  least 
prepared  to  conclude  that  they  are  more  necessary  to  us  than 
we  are  to  them.  They  were  not  long  out  themselves,  before 
they  began  to  yearn  for  the  scion  of  some  royal  house  beyond 
the  seas.  Shall  we  furnish  them  reason  to  think  that  we  are 
pining  for  the  return  of  our  natural  lords,  along  with  our 
Democratic  brethren,  who  have  been  wandering  like  sheep  with 
out  a  shepherd,  and  lamenting  the  desolation  of  the  Capitol 
with  more  than  the  tenderness  of  the  Moor,  who  wept  the 
exile  of  the  last  of  the  Abencerrages  under  the  deserted  towers 
of  the  Alhambra?  What  reason,  beyond  their  mere  repugnance 
to  the  association  with  the  northern  mudsills,  will  they  have  to 
lament  their  failure  in  the  battle-field,  when  they  are  once  more 


6lO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

reinstated  in  their  original  dominion  here?  Are  these  the 
means  by  which  a  statesman  expects  to  improve  the  lessons  of 
the  war?  If  kindness  and  submission  could  have  won  their 
hearts,  they  never  would  have  left  us.  Is  anybody  weak  enough 
now  to  think  that  they  are  so  chastened  and  humbled  by  defeat, 
that  a  restoration  to  power,  instead  of  intoxicating,  would  only 
disarm  them?  That  would  not  be  in  accordance  with  human 
nature  or  historical  example.  Did  the  catastrophe  of  Charles  I 
result  in  any  improvement  of  the  family?  Their  restoration 
was  but  the  prelude  to  another  revolution  that  drove  them 
from  the  throne.  It  is  the  same  blind  confidence  in  the  reforma 
tion  of  these  men  that  is  now  menacing  this  Government  with 
ruin. 

"But  is  there  any  evidence  that  they  are  changed,  or  that 
they  are  yet  in  a  proper  frame  of  mind  to  come  back,  and  per 
form  faithfully  their  duties  here?  We  all  know  better.  The 
special  commissioner  of  the  Executive  says  not,  and  his  testi 
mony  is  supported  by  all  the  presumptions  in  the  case.  It  would 
be  unreasonable  to  look  for  anything  else.  They  are  but  men, 
like  ourselves.  Alienated  in  affection  by  a  systematic  educa 
tion  of  thirty  years,  they  went  out  with  the  determination  never 
to  return.  The  Southern  heart  went  with  them.  Inflated  with 
pride  and  vainglory,  they  threw  down  the  gage  of  battle,  and 
defied  us  in  the  presence  of  a  world  that  sympathized  with 
them.  We  took  it  up,  and  they  are  at  our  feet,  deeply  wounded 
in  their  most  sensitive  point,  smarting  under  the  humiliation  of 
a  defeat  at  the  hands  of  their  own  slaves,  and  realizing  more 
than  the  bitterness  of  death  in  the  depth  of  their  fall,  and  the 
painful  recollections  that  it  suggests.  How  unreasonable  to 
expect  that  hatred,  the  deepest  and  most  undying — doubly  inten 
sified  by  such  humiliations — could  be  converted  into  love  by  such 
a  process,  and  the  lessons  of  a  generation  unlearned  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye !  But  they  do  not  even  affect  it ;  and  I  am 
rather  inclined  to  respect  the  pride  that,  under  the  greatest  of 
temptations,  has  prevented  them  from  condescending  to  the 
meanness  of  the  hyprocrite.  They  confess  that  they  are  sub 
dued,  but  only,  as  they  tell  us,  by  the  power  of  numbers — the 
mere  brute  superiority  of  the  North.  They  do  not  profess  con 
trition  for  their  great  crime.  They  do  not  even  admit  that  they 
have  sinned.  Nay,  they  glory  in  the  act,  treat  fidelity  to  their 
infamous  confederacy  as  the  most  heroic  of  virtues,  award 
public  honors  under  the  very  Government  that  has  crushed  them 
— and  which  that  Government  ratifies,  in  recompense  for  treason 
against  it,  and  visit  the  social  ban,  if  not  the  bullet  or  the  knife, 
upon  such  of  their  people  as  have  fought  valiantly  in  its  defense. 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         611 

It  is  but  reasonable,  I  say,  that,  coming  as  they  do,  out  of  the 
fires  of  the  rebellion,  they  should  feel  thus.  But  that  they  should 
act  thus  under  our  own  eye,  is  evidence  either  that  they  do  not 
wish  to  return,  or  that  the  dejection  that  followed  their  defeat, 
has  given  place  to  the  assurance,  that  they  are  not  only  to  be 
pardoned  their  offense,  but  to  return  as  conquerors.  Their 
leaders  certainly  do  desire  to  get  back  again,  because  they  are 
overthrown  in  battle,  and  it  is  but  to  exchange  the  place  of  a 
subject  for  that  of  a  ruler,  or  at  least  an  equal.  To  accomplish 
this,  they  would  have  been  glad  to  ransom  their  lives  and  prop 
erty  for  the  cheap  consideration  of  negro  suffrage.  They 
expected  probably  no  terms  more  favorable.  The  lenity  of  the 
Government  has  assured  them  that  treason  is  no  crime,  and  that 
there  is  to  be  no  atonement  for  the  past.  The  tone  of  the  procla 
mations  and  the  tenor  of  the  diplomatic  negotiations  have  taught 
them  that  nothing  was  expected  or  desired  by  the  President  but 
the  recognition  of  the  freedom  of  the  slave,  and  the  repudiation  of 
the  debt  incurred  in  carrying  on  the  war,  and  that  there  was  to 
be  no  other  security  for  the  future.  The  outgivings  of  public 
functionaries  have  instructed  them  that  they  were  wrong  in 
claiming  the  rights  of  belligerents,  and  that  they  have  a  right 
to  resume  their  places  here  upon  such  conditions  as  they  can 
make  with  the  Executive.  They  care  nothing  about  you  or 
your  laws.  They  look  only  to  the  Chief  Magistrate,  while  they 
defy  the  opinions  of  your  constituents,  and  regard  you  only  as 
the  mere  executors  of  his  will.  There  is  a  Providence  in  these 
manifestations  that  warns  us  of  our  danger,  if  we  would  give 
heed  to  it.  Ignoring  them,  we  shall  not  have  even  the  poor 
apology  of  saying  that  we  were  deceived  in  a  case  where  even 
the  largest  professions — if  they  had  vouchsafed  to  make  them, 
as  they  have  not — ought  not  to  have  been  allowed  to  put  us  off 
our  guard.  I  know  that  confidence  is  a  generous  plant,  and  that 
there  are  natures  so  unsophisticated  as  to  be  above  suspicion  or 
distrust.  There  are  men  certainly  whose  boundless  charity 
would  not  only  forgive  offenses,  however  frequently  repeated, 
but  even  persuade  them  to  give  their  faith  anew  to  those  who 
have  dealt  treacherously  with  them — as  these  men  have  with  us 
— while  they  would  reject  the  counsels  of  the  wise  and  prudent, 
on  the  ground  that  their  suspicions  were  ungenerous,  and  the 
results  apprehended  by  them  improbable.  These  men  may  be 
good  Christians,  but  they  are  poor  statesmen,  and  they  miscon 
strue  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  maxim  which  teaches  forgive 
ness,  if  they  suppose  that  it  inculcates  trust.  The  thing  that 
has  once  happened  may  happen  again.  It  is  not  sufficient  that 
it  is  improbable.  It  is  the  business  of  the  statesman  to  see 


6l2  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

that  it  is  made  impossible.  No  blind  confidence — no  false  sense 
of  security  on  his  own  part — will  excuse  him  for  hazarding  the 
peace  and  welfare  of  a  nation,  by  giving  his  trust  a  second  time 
where  it  has  once  been  disastrously  betrayed.  He  has  no  right 
to  sport  in  this  way  with  the  life  of  a  people.  He  cannot  afford 
to  be  thus  generous  with  other  people's  goods.  It  is  not  enough 
to  tell  us  that  the  present  Executive  of  this  nation — with  a 
strong  feeling,  of  course,  for  the  desolation  of  the  South — is 
magnanimous  enough  to  forgive  and  generous  enough  to  con 
fide  in  the  honor  and  loyalty  of  his  old  neighbors  and  associates 
in  council,  although  they  have  so  cruelly  persecuted  him — as 
they  will  do  again  as  soon  as  the  opportunity  occurs.  The 
twenty  millions  of  the  loyal  States  who  have  seen  so  little  good 
come  out  of  that  Nazareth,  must  have  something  surer  to 
rest  upon  than  his  oblivious  charity.  I  think  otherwise,  and  so 
do  my  constituents.  I  have  great  respect  for  his  opinions,  but 
the  facts  and  the  presumptions  are  all  against  him,  and  I  must 
be  governed  by  them.  If  we  are  wrong,  the  error  may  be  cor 
rected  hereafter.  If  he  is  wrong,  it  is  irremediable.  True  wis 
dom  demands  that  we  should  'make  assurance  doubly  sure,  and 
take  a  bond  of  fate,'  while  there  is  yet  time  to  do  it,  by  pro 
viding  against  all  possible  contingencies,  where  the  interests 
involved  are  so  vast  and  inappreciable.  If  the  terms  seem 
harsh,  that  is  the  fault  of  those  who  are  precipitating  the  solu 
tion.  A  reasonable  probation  would  enable  us  to  make  them 
easier.  I  would  rather,  for  my  own  part,  trust  to  the  mellow 
ing  influences  of  time.  If  you  desire  a  reunion  that  will  be 
permanent  and  real,  you  must  wait  till  their  hearts  are  changed 
— wait  until  the  bitterness  of  defeat  is  past,  and  until  they  are 
prepared  to  confess  their  errors,  and  ask  forgiveness,  and  res 
toration,  in  the  spirit  of  the  returning  prodigal.  Without  repent 
ance  forgiveness  is  idle,  and  restoration  worse.  Philosophy  and 
religion  alike  approve  the  soundness  of  this  doctrine.  You 
cannot  accomplish  a  task  of  this  sort  by  any  forcing  process. 
No  wise  Government  would  think  of  it.  No  sound  or  judicious 
statesman  would  advise  it.  If  they  cannot  come  back  now  in 
the  right  spirit,  and  will  not  come  with  such  securities  as  we 
have  a  right  to  demand,  it  were  better  they  should  not  come  at 
all.  I  would  hold  them  as  they  are — and  with  black  troops  too 
— until  their  territories  are  peopled  by  men  who  will  recognize 
the  value  of  the  Union — ay,  hold  them  forever,  if  necessary,  as 
subject  provinces.  But  it  will  not  be  necessary.  They  will  be 
glad  to  return  in  a  very  few  years,  on  just  such  conditions  as 
you  may  impose,  and  will  be  grateful  for  the  privilege.  Admit 
them  now,  and  withdraw  your  armies,  and  you  leave  your  few 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION''        613 

white  friends,  and  your  multitudinous  black  ones,  to  an  ostra 
cism  as  merciless  as  the  bloody  proscription  upon  which  they 
can  no  longer  venture  with  safety.  They  tell  you  so  themselves. 
While  the  President  informs  you  that  these  States,  or  some  of 
them,  are  ready  to  return — in  the  face  of  the  admitted  fact  that 
their  people,  in  almost  every  instance,  have  refused  to  ratify  even 
the  advantageous  bargain  made  with  him  by  their  leaders,  by 
sending  loyal  men  to  represent  them  here — every  breeze  from 
the  South  is  laden  with  the  earnest  remonstrances  of  the  loyal 
people  of  those  States,  telling  you  that  the  withdrawal  of  your 
power  will  be  the  signal  for  their  flight  and  exile  from  their 
homes,  and  altars,  from  the  graves  of  their  kindred,  and  their 
household  gods,  and  beseeching  you,  in  piteous  accents  of  despair 
and  agony,  not  to  abandon  them  to  their  remorseless  enemies. 

"But  before  they  do  come  in — whether  by  the  door  or  win 
dow — there  are  duties  to  be  performed  to  others,  dangers 
against  which  we  must  provide,  arising  out  of  the  obligations  of 
the  war  that  these  men  have  forced  upon  us.  We  have  incurred 
an  enormous  debt  that  is  mainly  owing  to  our  own  people. 
We  must  provide  for  the  payment  of  its  interest,  as  well  as  the 
redemption  of  all  the  pledges  we  have  made  to  the  disabled 
soldier,  and  to  the  widows  and  orphans  of  those  who  have 
perished  in  the  field.  Is  it  expected  that  these  men  will  assist 
us  in  redeeming  these  obligations,  that  some  persons  are  so 
anxious  to  associate  them  with  us  in  the  performance  of  this 
work  of  justice  and  mercy?  Do  you  propose  to  summon  these 
great  criminals  here,  and  translate  them  from  the  dock  to  the 
bench,  as  joint  assessors  with  yourselves,  and  those  who  have 
poured  out  their  money  or  their  blood  in  ocean  streams  in 
bringing  them  to  justice,  in  the  resettlement  of  the  nation,  in 
perfecting  its  securities,  and  in  fulfilling  the  obligations  you 
have  incurred  to  the  public  creditor,  and  to  the  families  of  those 
brave  men  who  have  gone  down  to  death  upon  so  many  southern 
battle-fields?  Will  you  insist  that  they  shall  come  into  council 
with  you  on  such  a  question  as  this?  The  ordeal  would  be  too 
severe.  They  have  denounced  the  war  as  not  only  unrighteous, 
but  unlawful;  and  they  are  not  alone  in  this  particular.  It  is 
not  the  rebels  militant  only — the  men  who  so  cheerfully  staked 
their  lives  on  their  opinions — who  think  so.  Their  old  associates 
in  the  North,  who  want  them  back  on  the  terms  of  the  President, 
have  taught  their  followers  here  upon  the  same  argument,  that 
the  public  securities  were  worthless,  and  would  be  repudiated. 
Is  there  no  risk  of  a  new  coalition  on  this  basis?  I  venture  to 
predict  that  the  next  phase  of  the  reunited  Democracy  of  the 
North  and  South,  (for  it  will  be  a  reunion  of  the  party  and  not 


614  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  the  States,)  will  be  opposition  to  the  payment  of  this  debt. 
It  may  not  discover  itself  at  once  in  the  shape  of  absolute  repu 
diation  in  the  North,  but  this  new  alliance  will  find  other  means, 
not  less  effective,  to  accomplish  its  work.  The  South,  with  all  its 
prejudices  and  pride,  would  rather  consent  even  to  negro 
suffrage,  than  allow  itself  to  be  taxed  for  such  a  purpose,  and 
you  cannot  compel  it,  without  the  aid  of  the  black  man.  The 
North  will  insist,  at  least,  on  scaling  your  securities  down  by  the 
actual  money  value  in  the  world's  market  of  the  paper  that  was 
invested  in  them.  It  will  damage  your  credit  by  quarreling 
with  your  schemes  of  revenue.  Knowing  that  taxation  is  always 
unpopular,  and  particularly  among  a  people  so  unused  to  it  as 
ourselves,  it  will  at  least  flatter  and  delude  the  multitude  with 
illusory  promises  of  relief,  and  with  the  aid  of  a  united  South, 
will,  at  the  next  turn  of  the  cards,  win  its  way  back  to  power, 
and  enter  once  more  upon  the  possession  of  the  Government. 

"But  the  mischief  will  not  end  here.  There  is  another  debt 
that  numbers  cannot  compute,  incurred  in  the  baffled  attempt 
to  overthrow  this  Union,  and  diffused  throughout  the  entire 
South.  There  is,  besides,  a  claim  yet  dormant  for  the  value 
ot  the  slaves  made  free  by  the  proclamation.  It  may  seem  to 
some  extravagant  to  talk  of  these,  but  it  is  no  more  extravagant 
than  many  other  things  that  we  have  witnessed,  and  among 
them  the  assertion  of  a  right  to  return  to  these  Halls  as  though 
they  had  not  sinned,  and  the  presumptuous  arrogance  that  has 
already  taken  our  Constitution  in  charge,  and  undertaken  to 
arraign  our  acts  of  self-defense  against  their  treason,  as  viola 
tions  of  that  instrument.  Admit  these  men — ignore  their 
crimes  by  your  votes  here — give  them  your  confidence  and  the 
eventual  mastery — as  before,  and  your  public  credit  will  deserv 
edly  receive  a  shock  that  will  tumble  it  into  ruins.  Readmit 
them  here,  and  every  prudent  man  will  endeavor  to  get  rid  of 
your  securities.  No  sharp-sighted  money-lender  will  trust  a 
Government  so  administered.  It  will  be  in  vain  for  you  to 
profess  in  joint  resolutions,  that  you  do  not  intend  to  pay  any 
of  the  debt  of  the  dead  confederacy,  or  of  the  claims  of  the  living 
slaveholder.  The  world  will  not  believe  it.  It  will  say  you 
mock  it,  when  the  makers  of  that  debt,  and  the  disloyal  slave 
holder  himself,  shall  be  exalted  by  your  votes  into  legislators, 
to  co-operate  with  the  party  here  that  has  decried  your  obliga 
tions,  and  declared  them  to  be  worthless.  The  assumption  by 
you  of  the  one,  and  the  payment  of  the  other,  would  be  but  a 
logical  sequence.  If  the  makers  of  that  debt  are  decided  to  be 
worthy  of  honor  and  trust  in  this  Government,  it  will  be  an 
estoppel  against  the  assertion  that  there  was  anything  essentially 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        615 

immoral  in  hiring  assassins  to  take  our  lives,  or  anything  in 
reason  to  prevent  the  payment  of  the  wages  of  their  iniquity. 
It  will  be  taken  for  granted  that  when  you  make  a  legislator  of 
the  criminal,  you  intend  to  pay  his  debts  of  honor  at  home.  You 
may  protest  that  you  do  not,  but  it  will  point  you  to  these  acts, 
and  scoff — ay,  it  will  scoff — at  your  empty  protestations,  as  no 
more  than  sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbals. 

"But  before  I  have  done,  allow  me  to  come  back  once 
more  to  the  great  conflict  of  power — the  gigantic  and  over 
shadowing  issue — which  has  been  forced  on  us  and  on  the 
country,  by  the  process  of  restoration  which  it  has  pleased  the 
President  in  the  exercise  of  his  own  judgment  to  adopt.  There 
are  other  considerations  that  demand  our  care  beyond  the  mere 
rehabilitation  of  the  conquered  States.  It  is  for  us  to  see  that, 
in  the  execution  of  the  guaranty,  the  Federal  Republic  itself 
shall  receive  no  detriment,  and  undergo  no  change.  There  are 
symptoms,  unquestionably  of  an  alarming  nature — developed,  of 
course,  by  the  high  stimulus  under  which  it  has  just  been 
working — that  forebode  a  serious  disturbance  of  its  balances — a 
revolution  equivalent  to  a  change  in  its  organic  structure,  if  not 
watched  narrowly  before  it  is  too  late.  The  time  has  now  come 
to  check  those  tendencies,  which  a  condition  so  unnatural  has 
so  largely  encouraged.  With  a  Union  newly  and  doubly  imperiled 
by  a  policy  that,  ignoring  the  sentiment  of  the  loyal  States,  has 
thrust  us  an  immeasurable  distance  back  from  the  position 
which  we  occupied  when  the  camp-fires  of  our  legions  were 
blazing  along  the  heights  of  the  Appomattox,  by  not  only  leav 
ing  treason  and  murder  to  go  unpunished,  but  warming  the 
former  into  life  and  hope  and  strength,  by  withdrawing  our 
troops,  and  endowing  it  with  the  power  of  reorganizing  its 
broken  columns  for  a  fresh  assault,  and  with  the  great  problem 
of  the  restoration  of  its  dissevered  members  complicated  with 
another  and  perhaps  a  greater,  in  the  tremendous  question 
whether  all  these  heterogeneous  elements  are  to  be  flung  into 
the  crucible,  and  fused  down  under  the  fierce  flames  of  war  into 
an  elective  monarchy,  it  seems  to  me,  with  all  due  respect  to  the 
President,  that  we  have  reached  a  crisis  in  our  affairs,  when  it 
behooves  the  people  to  look  to  their  securities,  and  their  Repre 
sentatives  here  to  resume  the  government  of  this  nation,  and  to 
say  to  the  advancing  tide  'thus  far  and  no  further.' 

"Standing,  as  I  do,  upon  the  traditions  of  the  fathers — 
upon  the  radical  but  conservative  maxims  of  republican  liberty 
— upon  the  great  principles  that  have  been  consecrated  by  the 
struggles  of  more  than  two  hundred  years — I  cannot  but  tremble 
for  my  country  when,  in  addition  to  all  this,  I  hear  the  national 


6l6  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

Representatives  instructed  by  other  than  their  lawful  masters 
in  regard  to  their  duties  here ;  when  I  find  myself  semi-officially 
advised  by  the  executive  head  of  the  nation,  who  has  just  been 
thanked  by  a  rebel  Legislature  for  the  act,  that  amendments  to 
its  fundamental  law,  proposed  by  its  delegates  here  for  its 
security,  are  unnecessary,  or  inadmissible,  or  entitled  to  no  more 
respect  than  the  resolutions  of  a  town  meeting,  while  bills  that 
have  passed  this  House,  and  are  now  actually  depending  in  the 
Senate,  are  made  the  subject  of  public  discourse  and  animadver 
sion  at  the  other  end  of  the  Avenue ;  when  I  hear  a  high  officer 
of  that  department  confessing  and  justifying  the  exercise  of  a 
dispensing  power  over  our  laws,  in  the  employment  of  traitors, 
and  the  payment  to  them  of  moneys  wrung  from  the  sweat  of 
the  toiling  millions  of  the  loyal  North;  when  I  see  members  of 
both  these  Houses  ready  and  anxious  at  such  a  time  to  abdicate 
their  rightful  powers — as  a  Legislature,  not  by  a  harmless  refer 
ence  to  a  committee  of  their  own  bodies — but  by  championing 
their  own  disability,  and  flinging  down  their  crowns  at  the  foot 
stool  of  executive  power;  when  I  hear  on  this  floor,  from  men 
who  opposed  the  war  throughout,  and  now,  by  a  logic  which  I 
do  not  question,  support  the  policy  that  gives  the  victory  to  the 
enemy,  the  appeal  of  the  people  to  their  own  Congress  com 
pared  to  the  howls  of  a  drunken  populace  at  the  doors  of  the 
revolutionary  Assembly  of  France,  that  in  the  name  of  liberty 
flooded  its  capital  with  blood,  and  in  the  name  of  religion 
dethroned  the  monarch  of  the  world ;  when  I  read  in  newspapers 
controlled  by  gentlemen  of  this  House  who  have  discovered 
no  sensibility  to  attacks  upon  its  own  privileges,  the  mere  asser 
tion  of  a  right  on  its  part  to  express  an  opinion  in  regard  to  the 
disposition  of  our  troops,  with  no  organized  enemy  in  the  field, 
denounced  as  an  invasion  of  the  prerogative;  when  I  hear  even 
the  suggestion  of  the  nation's  sentiment  in  regard  to  the  appro 
priate  doom  of  the  traitor  chiefs,,  who  now  stand  impeached 
before  the  world  of  a  connivance  in  the  starvation  of  our 
soldiers,  and  the  butchery  of  our  President,  reprobated  in  the 
same  way  by  public  journals  in  the  confidence  of  the  Govern 
ment;  and  when,  to  crown  all,  my  very  vision  is  blasted  by 
appeals  to  the  Executive  from  the  disloyal  papers  of  the  North, 
to  employ  that  patronage  which  the  loyal  people  have  alone 
bestowed  on  him,  to  coerce  their  Representatives  into  sub 
mission  to  his  views,  and,  failing  that,  to  enact  the  role  of 
another  Cromwell  or  Napoleon  in  this  Capitol,  while  an  answer 
ing  shout  comes  back  upon  the  southern  breeze,  that  the  bayonets 
of  the  soldiery,  who  flung  that  despotism  to  the  earth  must  be 
invoked  to  reinstate  it  here.  I  think  I  am  no  alarmist.  I  am 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        617 

not  apt  to  indulge  in  gloomy  auguries  in  regard  to  the  future 
of  a  nation  that  has  outlived  so  many  blunders,  and  been  so  often 
ransomed  by  an  Almighty  arm.  The  proverbial  honors  of  a 
prophet  of  evil  have  no  attractions  for  me.  Poesy  has  told  us 
the  story  of  Cassandra.  History  has  vouchsafed  to  hand  down 
to  us  the  name  and  fate  of  the  madman  who  ran  up  and  down 
the  streets  of  Jerusalem  crying  'Woe !  woe !'  while  the  armies 
of  Titus  were  encamped  about  its  walls.  But  if  I  stood  alone 
on  this  floor,  and  it  were  my  last  utterance,  holding  the  high 
trust  which  God  has  given  me,  with  a  nation  in  travail,  and  in 
view  of  the  dark  portents  that  cloud  the  horizon,  and  shake  the 
very  atmosphere  around  us,  I  would  say  to  the  people,  'Awake 
from  your  false  security,  or  prepare  yourselves  for  another 
holocaust.  Your  enemy  still  lives.  His  "impaired  vitality"  has 
been  restored.  Red-handed  treason  rears  its  head  as  proudly  and 
defiantly  and  insultingly  as  before.  It  menaces  your  capital. 
It  claims  to  dictate  to  your  President.  It  presumes  to  use  the 
very  organs  of  your  Government  to  denounce  your  attitude  as  a 
revolutionary  one,  and  to  arraign  your  servants  here  as  though 
they  were  in  rebellion  against  the  South.  It  moves  upon 
the  citadel  where  your  defenders  are  entrenched.  See  that  no 
warder  sleeps,  no  port  is  left  unguarded.  Look  to  it  that  no 
sentinel  unbars  your  gates.  Steel  the  hearts  of  your  defenders 
against  the  weakness  that  would  betray  like  treason.  See  that 
their  mail  is  proof — no  joint  agape,  no  rivet  out  of  place.  See 
that  no  Trojan  horse,  filled  with  armed  men — no  Tennessee  with 
fair  outside,  but  big  with  "pestilence  and  war"— rshall  win  its 
way  within  your  walls.  When  these  great  criminals  do  return, 
if  ever,  let  it  be  only  through  the  door  that  you  shall  indicate, 
and  with  such  infrangible  and  irreversible  securities  as  you  only 
have  the  right  to  demand.'  This  is  my  position.  Here  I  have 
taken  my  stand,  and  by  the  help  of  God  I  will  maintain  it  to  the 
end.  Others  may  falter  in  the  trial,  but  through  me  no  right 
shall  be  abridged — no  privilege  surrendered — no  single  leaf 
plucked — no  jewel  torn  from  the  crown  of  the  representative 
body." 

This  address  produced  one  of  the  greatest  impressions 
ever  made  upon  the  House.  The  correspondent  of  the 
Pittsburgh  Gazette,  under  date  of  February  i6th,  gave  a 
column  to  it.  Among  other  things  he  said : 

"To  say  that  this  brilliant,  bold  and  remarkable  oration 
created,  and  continues  to  excite  a  profound  sensation,  is  but 
poorly  to  depict  its  telling  and  thrilling  effects.  In  beauty  of 


6l8  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

diction,  appropriateness  of  style  and  scholarly  elucidation,  it 
charmed  those  of  the  finest  taste.  If  it  has  a  fault  at  all,  it  is 
the  opulence  of  its  ideas,  and  in  the  golden  exuberance  of  its 
imagery.  There  are  many  passages  in  it  which  remind  us  of 
Burke ;  others  again  which  recall  the  best  effusions  of  Sheridan. 
If,  however,  Mr.  Williams  has  ever  adopted  a  favorite  or  a  model, 

it  is  most  unquestionably  the  former. That  I  may  express 

my  meaning  more  clearly,  I  shall  take  the  liberty  of  introducing 
a  comparison.  It  is  this:  What  Mr.  Sumner's  great  oration 
was  in  the  Senate,  Mr.  Williams' — though  more  successfully — 
was  in  the  House.  It  was  my  good  fortune  to  hear  them  both. 
Aiming,  in  the  main,  at  the  same  objects,  agreeing,  if  not  fully, 
yet  so  in  sentiment,  and  glowing  with  the  same  ardor,  born  of 
deep-rooted  conviction — they  yet  approach  the  goal  from  differ 
ent  starting  places,  and  by  widely  separate  courses.  Mr.  Sum- 
ner  has  the  regular  order,  the  studied  method,  the  lucid  argu 
ment,  and  the  flowing  silvery  cadences  of  the  great  Tully.  Mr. 
\Villiams,  at  first  view,  seems  to  lack  order  and  method  in  the 
arrangement  of  his  theme ;  yet,  upon  close  examination,  the  pro 
cession  of  his  thoughts  will  be  found  to  be  lucid  and  natural. 
In  a  number  of  his  impassioned  bursts,  he  resembles,  in  point  of 
daring,  dash  and  vehemence,  some  of  the  finest  periods  of 
Demosthenes.  As  an  instance  I  refer  to  his  defense  of  the  rights 
and  powers  of  Congress,  in  which  he  exclaims — 'It  is  here  only, in 
these  Halls,  that  Liberty  can  live'  And  again,  in  reference  to 
Pennsylvania,  his  own  great  state,  he  utters  these  truthful 
words — 'She  bids  her  sons,  whom  she  has  placed  on  guard  at  the 
Capitol  in  this  hour  of  the  nation's  trial,  stand  faithfully,  as  did 
her  heroes  in  the  bloody  trench,  by  their  trusts  as  Representa 
tives,  and  resist  with  jealous  watchfulness,  every  attempt  from 
whatever  quarter  to  encroach  upon  the  just  powers  which  she 

has  delegated  them'     *     *     *. Favorably  known  and  highly 

prized  as  has  been  Mr.  Williams  in  the  comparatively  limited 
circle  in  which  he  has  moved,  this  speech  will  prove  for  him  a 
leap  into  the  fore-front  in  the  gallery  of  our  most  illustrious 
orators.  Even  gentlemen  disagreeing  with  him — persons,  how 
ever,  of  excellent  culture  and  taste — have  been  heard  to  declare 
that — 'if  he  should  make  no  other  effort,  this  one  will  render 
him  famous.'  This  contribution  to  American  eloquence  will 
certainly  cause  his  name  to  become  a  household  word.  Without 
any  exaggeration,  Messrs.  Editors,  the  praise  bestowed  upon  it 
is  really  wonderful.  In  the  generations  to  come,  the  young  men 
of  the  Republic  will  fondly  recite  his  charming  sentences  to 
enraptured  listeners.  *  *  *  For  two  hours  and  a  half  he 
held  the  House  and  galleries  spell-bound.  Twice  was  his  time 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        619 

extended  without  a  grumbling  whisper.  On  the  floor  clustering 
around  him,  were  prominent  Senators  and  distinguished  officials ; 
whilst  men  of  the  House,  celebrated  for  their  intellectual 
ability — such  as  Boutwell,  Bingham,  Shellabarger,  Stevens, 
Schofield,  Kelley  and  Conkling — lingered  on  his  majestic  utter 
ances  with  a  delighted  attention,  which,  never  for  an  instant, 
flagged.  And  when  he  concluded,  with  a  peroration  of  rare  and 
magical  force,  the  applause  was  such  as  those  walls  had  never 
before  given  an  echo  to.  It  was  renewed  from  floor  and  galleries 
again — a  dozen  times — with  a  heartiness  and  emphasis  that 
cannot  be  mistaken  nor  forgotten.  As  he  finished,  members 
rushed  forward  to  grasp  his  hand,  strangers  hurried  from  the 
galleries  to  be  introduced  to  him,  a  buzz  of  admiration  filled  the 
hall  and  the  corridors,  and  floated  along  with  the  dispersing 
crowds  wherever  they  went."  He  adds  in  closing  that  Mr. 
Williams'  speech  had  won  him  "a  name,  fame,  and  repu 
tation  as  an  orator  and  statesman,  more  splendid  than  that  of 
any  man  in  Washington,  and  which  will  eventually  become  as 
broad,  expansive  and  perpetual  as  the  cause  of  loyalty,  equality 
and  justice  in  this  Republic."1 

"No  [such]  outburst  of  enthusiastic  approval,"  said  another 
reporter,  "has  ever  been  awarded  to  a  member,  and  nothing  but 
the  passage  of  the  amendment  abolishing  slavery,  produced  any 
thing  like  it.  Speaker  Colfax  had  placed  Mr.  Thaddeus  Stevens 
in  the  chair,  and  when  Mr.  Williams  closed,  and  the  cheering 
began,  he  used  his  mallet  to  assist,  and  adjourned  the  House 
without  a  vote,  exclaiming:  'This  House  stands  adjourned! 
Cheer  as  much  as  you  please  !'  I  fought  my  way  to  the  orator, 
and,  after  congratulating  him,  passed  over  to  Mr.  Stevens,  whom 
I  accompanied  home.  On  my  way  I  asked  him  what  he  thought 
of  the  speech  we  had  just  heard.  His  answer  was  :  'I  do  not  think 
I  ever  heard  a  better  speech,'  and  after  a  moment  added :  'I  have 
never  heard  so  good  a  speech.'  *  *  *  But  the  old  statesman 
was  not  alone  in  his  opinion.  Governor  Boutwell,  one  of  the 
ablest  men  of  the  nation,  came  to  Mr.  Stevens  during  the 
delivery  of  the  speech  and  said :  'This  speech  is  as  long  as  Sum- 
ner's,  and  abler;  it  contains  all  its  learning  without  its  pedantry;' 
and  Gen.  Butler,  whom  I  visited  this  morning,  told  me  that  the 
same  remark  had  been  made  to  him  by  the  Governor,  with  the 
advice  to  him  to  'get  a  copy  of  that  speech  and  read  it  often.'  " 

1  A  letter  of  February  11,  1866,  indicates  that  either  this  report  or  the  next 
one  following  was  written  by  Judge  Shannon,  who  was  in  Washington  at  the 
time. 

2  Unfortunately   this  clipping  cannot  be  identified  in  source,  although  it  is 
seen  to  be  a  Pittsburgh  paper,  probably  the  Gazette,  and  the  context  shows  it  to 
refer  to  this  speech.     Williams  papers. 

The  friends  of  the  President  had  a  public  meeting  on  the  22d  of  February 
(1866),  at  which  Montgomery  Blair  described  Mr.  Williams'  speech  as  the  signal 


62O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

If  it  produced  this  impression  upon  those  who  favored 
his  position,  it  aroused  equal  feeling  among  his  opponents 
and  made  him  the  man  of  the  hour  in  the  rising  tide 
against  the  course  of  President  Johnson.  He  became  a 
dominant  factor  in  the  operations  of  the  judiciary  com 
mittee,  and  when,  on  June  nth,  he  reported  from  that 
committee  a  bill  for  the  regulation  of  appointments  to 
and  removals  from  office  the  event  was  a  blow  at  the 
President  in  his  relations  with  his  Cabinet,  particularly 
his  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Stanton.  This  was  because,  it 
need  hardly  be  said,  Congress  was  operating  the  Freed- 
men's  Bureau  through  the  Secretary  of  War  to  neutralize 
the  action  of  the  forced-labor  features  of  the  new  State 
governments  organized  under  the  "restoration"  policy 
of  President  Johnson ;  and  also  because  Congress  pro 
posed  to  replace  "restoration"  with  a  "reconstruction" 
policy  of  its  own.  Furthermore,  with  a  two-thirds  major 
ity  in  each  House,  irritated  by  not  only  Johnson's  course 
itself,  but  even  more  by  his  invective  against  that  body, 
Congress  had  both  the  purpose  and  ability  to  carry  them 
out  over  the  President's  veto.  In  March,  Congress  passed 
a  Civil  Rights  Bill  over  his  veto,  as  it  had  the  extended 
Freedmen's  Bureau  Bill,  and  in  June  re-enforced  this  with 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  which  not  only  gave  citizen 
ship  to  the  negro,  but  made  citizenship  of  all  white  people 
lately  in  secession  depend  upon  removal  of  disabilities 
by  Congress.  This  latter  removed  the  question  of  the 
unconstitutionality  of  the  Civil  Rights  Bill  which  the 
President  raised,  but  as  no  Southern  State,  save  Tennes 
see,  accepted  this  product  of  the  first  session  of  the 
Thirty-ninth  Congress,  the  second  session,  which  met 
December  3,  1866,  found  itself  in  open  war  with  both 
President  Johnson  and  his  newly  organized  State  govern 
ments  in  the  South. 

About  the  time  this  session  began  there  was  great 
interest  throughout  Pennsylvania  as  to  who  should  be 
successor  to  Senator  Edgar  Cowan.  On  December  3, 

for  assault  on  the  Chief  Executive.     Letter  of  February  25,  1866,  from  Mr.  Wil 
liams  to  his  wife. 

A  letter  of  March  6,  1866,  says:  "The  President  is  lost  to  us.  He  is  de 
termined  to  have  his  own  way,  which  Congress  will  not  permit.  What  mad 
ness  he  may  be  guilty  of  next  I  don't  know.  Nothing  would  surprise 
me.  *  *  *." 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        621 

1866.  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette,  in  an  editorial,  stated  that 
no  one  but  Mr.  Williams  had  been  prominently  spoken 
of  in  that  section.  "Confessedly  of  superior  intellectual 
ability  and  training,  and  of  sterling  honesty,  he  excites 
admiration,  rather  than  friendship/'  it  continued,  and 
further  added  that  although  Stevens  was  superior  in 
"ability  to  manage  men  and  affairs,"  he  was  not  so  in 
capacity  to  deal  with  ideas.  It  seemed  to  think  Cameron 
would  be  the  successful  name.  An  editorial  in  another 
paper  said  :  "He  [Williams]  is  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
sagacious  statesmen  in  the  country ;  he  has  proved  to  be 
a  faithful  Representative  of  his  district ;  on  all  the  great 
questions,  which  the  loyal  people  of  our  own  State  and 
other  States  desire  to  be  rightly  and  safely  adjusted,  he 
is  reliable ;  the  people  know  and  can  trust  him ;  his 
increased  majority  at  the  last  election  indicates  his 
increasing  popularity;  his  extensive  and  varied  knowl 
edge  of  our  national  affairs,  his  unfaltering  devotion  to 
the  Right,  his  masterly  powers  in  debate,  and  his  clear, 
strong,  grasping  intellect  and  sterling  integrity  would  be 
highly  beneficial  to,  and  would  not  fail  to  shed  luster 
upon,  our  State."1  A  correspondent,  referring  to  this 
editorial,  added :  "Follow  the  course  of  Mr.  Williams 
from  the  organization  of  the  Republican  party,  and  we 
find  him  always  in  the  front  ranks,  advocating  those 
principles  of  Justice  and  Humanity  which  carried  us  safely 
thro'  a  four  years'  bloody  war.  Although  a  Radical  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word,  yet  his  radicalism  never 
approached  ultraism,  but  has  been  of  such  a  character  as 
to  make  him  always  right ;  and  indeed  sentiments  uttered 
by  him  since  the  outbreak  of  the  rebellion,  and  which 
were  looked  upon  with  distrust  by  many,  seem  now  to 
have  been  uttered  with  a  spirit  of  prophecy,  as  every 
word  then  uttered  by  him  has  become  a  matter  of  his 
tory.  By  his  elevation  to  the  position  of  Senator,  the 
people  of  Pennsylvania  would  point  to  their  Senator,  as 
the  compeer  of  Webster  and  Clay.  And  we  doubt 

1  Unfortunately  this  clipping  and  the  next  one  cannot  be  identified  as  to 
paper  and  date,  though  it  is  plainly  nearly  contemporary  with  the  Gazette. 

Mr.  Williams  wrote  a  scathing  rejoinder  to  Secretary  of  the  Interior 
Browning's  defense  of  President  Johnson  in  the  Gazette  of  the  ist  of  Novem 
ber,  1866,  which  attracted  great  attention. 


622  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

whether  any  speech  delivered  by  either  Webster  or 
Clay,  was  received  with  such  enthusiasm  by  Congress 
or  more  highly  eulogized  by  the  press,  than  was  the 
speech  of  Mr.  Williams  on  the  subject  of  Reconstruc 
tion  at  the  first  session  of  the  present  Congress."  As 
the  Gazette  intimated,  however,  Cameron  was  chosen. 

When  the  members  assembled  Mr.  Williams  might 
have  been  seen  in  his  seat,  the  sixth  one  back  on  the  next 
aisle  west  of  the  central  one — to  the  Speaker's  left  and 
the  side  of  the  aisle  at  his  left  also, — with  Blaine  in  the 
second  seat  ahead,  Garfield  in  the  third  seat  to  his  right 
in  the  row  in  front  of  him,  Boutwell  in  the  same  relation 
in  the  row  back  of  him,  Allison  between  him  and  Gar- 
field,  Wilson  beside  Boutwell,  Kelley  on  the  middle  aisle 
in  a  seat  corresponding  to  that  of  Williams,  and  Stevens 
in  the  fourth  seat  to  Elaine's  right — not  to  mention  more 
of  this  distinguished  body.  He  called  up  his  bill  on 
Removals  from  Office  immediately  on  the  5th  instant  and 
made  another  speech  of  great  force,  which  illustrates 
some  phases  of  his  power  at  its  best  estate.1  It  undoubt 
edly  contributed  as  much  to  his  scholarly  reputation  as 
any  address  of  his  before  that  body,  and  without  doubt 
secured  the  passage  of  this  strategic  measure.  He 
believed  the  bill  would  make  impeachment  unnecessary, 
although,  in  a  letter  of  the  8th  instant,  he  says :  "There 
is  a  strong  disposition,  I  think,  to  impeach  &  remove 
the  President.  Nobody  has  any  respect  for,  and  nobody 
goes  to  see  him.  If  we  could  feel  sure  of  the  Senate  there 
would  be  no  hesitation  about  the  matter." 

"Mr.  Speaker,"  he  began,  "with  the  indulgence  of  the  House 
I  will  now  proceed  to  state  the  objects  of  the  bill  reported  by 
your  committee,  along  with  some  of  the  considerations  which 
have  commended  it  to  their  judgment  as  a  measure  of  great 
national  concern,  and  one  which  falls  within  the  constitutional 
powers  of  this  Congress. 

"The  first  section  enacts  that  no  officer  who  has  been 
appointed  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate  shall 
be  removable  except  by  the  same  agencies,  with  the  proviso, 
however,  that  in  case  of  disability  or  misconduct  in  office 
during  the  recess  of  that  body,  the  President  may,  with  the 

1  Congressional  Globe,   Thirty-ninth  Congress,  2d   Session,   Part   i,   p.  22. 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         623 

advice  of  the  Attorney  General,  suspend  the  incumbent  and 
commission  another  until  the  next  session,  at  which  it  shall  be 
his  duty  to  report  the  fact,  along  with  the  causes  of  removal, 
and  the  name  of  the  officer  so  appointed,  or  such  other  person 
as  he  shall  choose  to  nominate;  and  that  in  case  of  the  refusal 
of  the  Senate  to  approve  the  act,  the  officer  so  suspended  shall 
resume  his  functions,  without  any  allowance,  however,  of  com 
pensation  in  the  meanwhile. 

"The  second  section  provides  that  no  officer  renominated 
shall  continue  to  hold  after  his  rejection,  and  that  the  party  so 
rejected  shall  not  be  again  appointed. 

''The  third  section  I  propose,  with  the  approbation  of  the 
committee,  to  strike  out,  and  insert  two  others — one  to  the  effect 
that  where  a  vacancy  happening  during  the  recess  may  have  been 
filled  by  the  President,  it  shall  be  his  duty  to  make  a  nomination 
before  the  end  of  the  next  session,  and  in  case  of  the  nomination 
of  any  other  person  or  persons  than  the  one  so  commissioned, 
and  the  refusal  of  the  Senate  to  advise  and  consent  thereto,  the 
office  shall  not  be  considered  as  vacant  upon  its  adjournment, 
but  the  person  so  commissioned  shall  continue  to  hold  and 
enjoy  the  same  during  the  recess,  and  until  he  shall  be  either 
nominated  and  rejected,  or  duly  superseded  by  a  new  appoint 
ment;  and  the  other  providing  that  the  heads  of  Departments 
shall  hold  their  offices  for  the  term  of  four  years  unless  removed 
with  the  concurrence  of  the  Senate;  and  shall  moreover  nomi 
nate,  and  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate 
appoint,  all  their  assistants  and  subordinates,  to  hold  for  the  like 
period,  unless  removed  in  the  same  manner. 

"The  bill  rests,  therefore,  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  power 
of  removal  does  not  rightfully  belong  to  the  President  alone — 
even  if  he  can  be  properly  claimed  to  have  any  share  of  it,  under 
the  Constitution — and  cannot  be  safely  left  with  that  officer 
without  any  restraint  upon  its  exercise;  and  this  as  a  general 
principle,  and  without  any  reference  to  the  merits  or  demerits 
of  the  existing  functionary.  It  proposes  to  improve  the  rare 
advantage  of  a  dissociation  between  the  party  in  power  here 
and  the  President  of  its  own  choice,  for  the  correction  of  a  great 
evil,  by  a  surrender  and  dedication  of  the  spoil  which  that  party 
may  be  supposed  to  have  won,  upon  the  public  altar,  and  for  the 
nation's  benefit,  through  all  coming  time. 

"It  aims  at  the  reformation  of  a  giant  vice  in  the  adminis 
tration  of  this  Government,  by  bringing  its  practice  back  from 
a  rule  of  its  infancy  and  inexperience,  resting  mainly,  perhaps, 
on  its  unbounded  confidence  in  the  personal  virtues  of  its  first 


624  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Chief  Magistrate,  to  what  are  believed  to  be  the  true  spirit 
and  meaning  of  its  fundamental  law. 

"To  accomplish  this  object  it  disturbs  no  title,  and  attacks 
no  judicial  precedent.  It  strikes  not  even  at  any  prescription 
with  'the  hoar  of  innumerable  ages'  upon  it.  It  contemplates 
but  the  review  of  a  legislative  opinion  of  yesterday,  under  the 
lights  that  a  miraculous  growth  and  an  era  of  revolution  have 
shed  upon  it,  along  with  the  resumption  of  a  constitutional  power 
that  has  been  heretofore  surrendered. 

"Nor  is  this  the  first  occasion  on  which  that  opinion  has  been 
questioned.  It  was  anticipated  by  a  denial  of  an  authoritative 
character.  It  was  the  opinion  of  a  divided  court.  There  has 
been  no  time,  I  think,  at  which  its  soundness  has  not  been 
disputed.  It  has  been  subjected  again  and  again  to  the  most 
damaging  criticism  by  the  best  professional  minds  of  the  nation. 
It  has  found  no  favor  anywhere,  I  think,  upon  the  score  of  rea 
son.  It  is  not  even  old  enough  to  be  venerable.  There  is  noth 
ing  irreverent,  therefore,  in  its  impeachment,  even  though  time 
might  be  supposed  to  consecrate  error,  or  a  prescription  to  run 
against  truth  or  reason  in  the  forum  of  the  statesman. 

"To  estimate  justly,  however,  the  weight  to  which  it  is 
entitled,  it  is  necessary  to  show  its  precise  extent,  the  circum 
stances  by  which  it  was  attended,  and  the  argument  on  which 
it  was  sustained,  before  proceeding  to  discuss  the  question  on 
original  grounds  and  with  a  sole  reference  to  the  Constitution 
itself,  on  the  hypothesis  that  it  is  still  an  open  one. 

"It  is  to  be  noted,  then,  that  while  it  was  objected  widely  in 
advance  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  by  those  who  were 
opposed  to  it,  that  it  would  give  to  the  Executive  the  powers  of  a 
King,  it  does  not  seem  even  to  have  occurred  to  those  who  were 
the  most  ingenious  in  exploring  and  exaggerating  its  defaults, 
that  there  was  anything  in  it  which  could  be  construed  to  bestow 
on  the  President  the  eminently  regal  power  of  displacing  the 
officers  of  the  Government  at  his  own  individual  will.  It  does 
appear,  however,  to  have  been  argued  by  its  friends,  in  answer 
to  the  objection  of  instability  through  frequent  changes 
of  administration,  that  inasmuch  as  the  Senate  was  to  co-operate 
in  the  business  of  appointments,  and  'its  consent  would  there 
fore  be  necessary  to  displace  as  well  as  to  appoint,  a  change  of 
the  Chief  Magistrate  would  not  occasion  so  violent  or  so  general 
a  revolution  as  might  be  expected  if  he  were  the  sole  disposer 
of  the  offices.'  (Federalist,  No.  77.)  The  undisputed  assump 
tion,  therefore,  that  the  President  could  not  remove,  was  one  of 
the  arguments  on  which  the  briefness  of  his  tenure  and  the 
frequency  of  elections  were  defended,  and  the  instrument  itself 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        625 

commended  to  the  support  of  the  people  of  the  States  by  the 
leading  spirits  who  presided  at  its  formation. 

"When  the  first  Congress  met,  however,  to  inaugurate  the 
Government  then  newly  formed,  the  question  arose  at  once,  on 
the  establishment  of  the  Department  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
whether  the  head  of  that  bureau  should  be  made,  in  terms, 
removable  by  the  President;  one  party  claiming  that  the  power 
of  removal  was  included  in  the  power  to  appoint,  and  could, 
therefore,  be  exercised  only  in  connection  with  the  Senate,  and 
the  other,  with  Madison  at  its  head,  asserting  with  equal  con 
fidence,  that  it  was  a  strictly  executive  function,  and  as  such, 
conferred  on  the  President  by  the  first  section  of  the  second 
article  of  the  Constitution.  The  result  was,  not  a  decision,  but 
what  better  deserves  to  be  characterized  as  a  compromise  or 
evasion  of  the  question,  by  the  substitution  for  the  words,  'to 
be  removable  by  the  President/  of  the  phraseology,  'whenever 
the  said  principal  officer  shall  be  removed  by  the  President,  or 
in  any  other  case  of  vacancy,  the  chief  clerk  shall  take  charge 
ot  the  papers,'  &c. ;  a  result  which  by  no  necessary  inference 
imported  anything  more  than  an  implied  or  permissive  authority, 
which  the  Opposition  was  ready  to  accord  to  the  President  on 
personal  grounds,  but  which  the  friends  of  that  officer,  claiming 
it  under  the  Constitution  as  his  right,  were  not  willing  to  accept 
as  a  grant.  In  this  shape,  however,  after  a  protracted  contest 
and  a  close  division  in  the  House,  the  bill  was  passed  through 
committee  in  the  Senate  by  the  casting  vote  of  the  Vice  Presi 
dent,  and  finally  by  one  majority.  It  is  worthy  of  remembrance, 
however,  that  the  Vice  President  was  John  Adams,  and  the 
President  himself  a  man  without  'that  sin  by  which  the  angels 
fell,'  who  had  never  betrayed  a  trust,  or  abused  a  power;  and 
that,  moreover,  the  weight  of  the  argument  turned  on  the 
improbability  of  future  degeneracy,  and  the  liability  to  impeach 
ment  in  case  of  possible  corruption  or  profligacy  in  future  times. 
But  succeeding  Congresses  went  still  further,  in  making  the 
tenure  of  offices,  over  which  the  Constitution  had  endowed  them 
with  exclusive  and  unquestionable  control,  dependent  on  the 
pleasure  of  the  Executive,  and  the  nation  acquiesced  under  an 
experience  of  forty  years,  which  seemed  to  justify  the  confidence 
that  the  virtues  of  its  first  Chief  Magistrate  had  inspired.  It 
was  not  until  it  was  startled  from  its  security  in  1829  by  the 
new  and  atrocious  doctrine,  that  the  public  offices  were  but  the 
lawful  plunder  of  contending  factions,  and  the  profligate  cry 
that  'to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils,'  that  it  began  seriously 
to  inquire  into  the  wisdom  and  lawfulness  of  a  practice  that  had 
grown  up  sub  silentio,  and  apparently  fastened  itself  upon  the 


626  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Government.  The  result  of  that  inquiry,  however,  was  a  gen 
eral  conviction  that  there  was  no  warrant  for  it  in  the  Consti 
tution,  and  no  more  of  force  in  the  argument  that  had  been 
allowed  to  prevail,  than  there  was  of  the  prophetic  spirit  in  the 
statesmen  who  were  so  prodigal  of  their  assurances  that  no  evil 
could  flow  from  it,  and  that  the  corrective  would  be  an  easy 
one.  That  conviction  was  shared  by  the  very  ablest  men  of  the 
nation,  who  had  been  trained  in  the  study  of  its  Constitution 
under  the  light  of  nearly  half  a  century's  experience,  and  were 
agreed  upon  the  necessity  of  such  a  reform  as  would  bring  the 
Government  back  to  its  true  principles.  Mr.  Webster,  in  a 
speech  made  by  him  in  the  Senate  in  1835,  holds  this  emphatic 
language : 

"  'After  considering  the  question  again  and  again  within  the 
last  six  years,  I  am  willing  to  say  that  in  my  deliberate  judgment 
the  original  decision  was  wrong.  I  cannot  but  think  that  those  who 
denied  the  power  in  1789  had  the  best  of  the  argument.  It  appears 
to  me,  after  thorough  and  repeated  and  conscientious  examination, 
that  an  erroneous  interpretation  was  given  to  the  Constitution  in 
this  respect  by  the  decision  of  the  First  Congress.' 

"And  again: 

"  'I  have  the  clearest  conviction  that  they  [the  Convention] 
looked  to  no  other  mode  of  displacing  an  officer  than  by  impeach 
ment,  or  the  regular  appointment  of  another  person  to  the  same 
place.' 

"And  further: 

"'I  believe  it  to  be  within  the  just  power  of  Congress  to  reverse 
the  decision  of  1789,  and  I  mean  to  hold  myself  at  liberty  to  act 
hereafter  upon  that  question  as  the  safety  of  the  Government  and  of 
the  Constitution  may  require.' 

"The  like  opinion  was  obviously  held  by  both  Kent  and 
Story,  and  the  same  is  inferable  from  the  report  made  by  Mr. 
Calhoun  to  the  Senate,  on  the  subject  of  removals  from  office, 
in  1835.  If  earlier  authority  were  necessary,  however,  it  may 
be  found,  not  only  in  the  Federalist  but  in  a  letter  of  Alexander 
Hamilton  to  James  McHenry,  then  Secretary  of  War,  written  in 
1799,  and  about  ten  years  after  the  debate  in  Congress  that  is 
supposed  to  have  settled  this  question. 

"It  was  in  vain,  however,  that  the  statesmen  of  a  later 
period,  in  view  of  the  enormous  abuses  that  threatened  to  over 
throw  the  just  balances  of  this  Government,  and  to  dwarf  all 
its  other  departments  under  the  overshadowing  growth  of  the 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        627 

executive,  pointed  out  the  error  into  which  we  had  fallen,  and 
the  rocks  upon  which  the  ship  of  state  was  driving  with  such 
headlong  impetuosity.  A  triumphant  party,  supported,  as  it  was 
almost  sure  to  be,  by  an  unscrupulous  majority  in  both  Houses, 
and  looking  to  the  offices  of  the  Government  as  its  lawful  spoil, 
was  sure  to  resist,  and  resist  successfully,  every  attempt  to  get 
back  to  the  true  reading  of  the  Constitution;  while  this  power 
of  resistance  was  equally  sure  to  be  strengthened  by  the  increase 
of  the  means  of  corruption  in  the  multiplication  of  the  Federal 
offices.  That  increase  was,  even  in  ordinary  times,  but  a  natural 
and  necessary  result  of  our  marvelous  growth  as  a  nation.  The 
exigencies  of  the  war  through  which  we  have  just  passed,  and 
the  new  and  heavy  responsibilities  it  has  left  behind  it,  swelling 
our  armies  beyond  example,  and  necessitating  the  establishment 
of  a  new  department  of  the  public  service,  that  permeates  the 
land,  and  enters  the  castle  and  unlocks  and  inspects  the  cup 
board  and  the  strong-box  of  every  citizen,  have  administered  to 
it  an  impulse  that  has  carried  it  beyond  the  remotest  point  it 
was  likely  to  have  reached  in  the  course  of  another  century. 
The  Executive  of  this  nation,  with  its  own  tacit  consent,  now 
wields  a  power  over  the  fortunes  of  its  people,  that  would,  in 
ambitious  hands,  and  if  adroitly  used,  be  sufficient,  not  only  to 
buttress  and  sustain  a  throne,  but  to  make  him  the  envy  of  the 
proudest  potentates  of  Christendom.  He  has  not  hesitated  to 
proclaim  aloud  that  he  intends  to  use  it  to  enforce  his  will;  and 
upon  this  hint  I  now  propose  to  strip  him  of  the  ability  to  make 
good  his  menaces,  by  reasserting  the  authority  of  Congress,  and 
taking  back  into  its  own  custody,  and  tor  its  own  defense,  the 
jewel  with  which  it  has  so  generously  and  improvidently  parted 
in  the  honeymoon  of  its  existence,  when  all  was  confidence  and 
love. 

"And  now  as  to  the  extent  of  the  decision,  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  swaddling-cloths  that  are  supposed  to  fit  us  now, 
and  cramp  the  movements  of  a  giant  State  in  the  direction  of 
reform.  Confounded  as  it  has  been  with  a  practice  that  has  only 
followed  out  its  spirit,  its  effect,  1  think,  has  been  greatly 
magnified  in  the  general  estimation.  In  itself,  and  apart  from 
the  debate  to  which  it  gave  rise,  it  decides  absolutely  nothing, 
except  that  in  the  absence  of  all  legislation,  the  power  of 
removal,  in  cases  of  appointments  confided  to  the  Executive  by 
the  Constitution,  belongs  to  him  alone.  It  rules  nothing  as  to 
cases  where  the  term  is  fixed,  or  as  to  inferior  officers,  where  the 
mode  of  appointment  is  left  entirely  with  Congress.  The  ques 
tion  involved  was  as  to  the  heads  of  the  Departments  only,  and 
although  the  line  of  demarkation  has  never  yet  been  authori- 


628  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

tatively  drawn  between  the  superior  and  inferior  officers  of  the 
Government,  it  may  be  safely  assumed  that  as  the  head — which  is 
the  constitutional  phraseology — is  superior  to  all  the  other  mem 
bers  of  the  body,  so  these  functionaries  are  to  be  classed  among 
the  superior  officers  whose  appointment  is  vested  by  the  Con 
stitution,  though  only  sub  modo,  in  the  President.  There  was  no 
question,  however,  as  to  the  power  to  regulate  the  duration  of 
the  office.  It  stood  indefinite  on  the  bill.  In  that  condition  it 
was  not  disputed  that  the  tenure  must  be  either  at  pleasure,  or 
during  good  behavior.  The  Constitution  had  assigned  the  latter 
to  no  other  officers  except  the  judges,  and  the  inference  was 
irresistible  that  all  others  must  hold  their  places  by  the  former, 
unless  Congress  should  give  some  other  duration  to  their 
offices.  (2  Story's  Commentaries,  sec.  1537;  I  Lloyd's  Debates, 
511,  512.)  The  point  in  dispute  was  only  at  whose  pleasure 
they  were  to  be  held;  whether  at  that  of  the  appointing  power, 
or  of  the  President  alone.  And  this  accords  precisely  with  the 
statements  of  both  Kent  and  Story,  the  two  leading  commen 
tators  on  the  Constitution,  and  unquestionably  the  highest 
authorities  in  the  country.  The  former  describes  it  as  'a  ques 
tion  whether  the  power  of  removal  in  case  of  officers  appointed 
to  hold  at  pleasure,  or  where  the  duration  is  not  specially  declared, 
resided  anywhere  but  in  the  body  that  appointed.'  (i  Kent's 
Commentaries,  sec.  14,  pages  308-11.)  The  latter  puts  it  in 
the  same  way,  by  condensing  the  whole  issue  into  the  two  great 
questions:  first,  to  whom,  in  the  absence  of  all  legislation  regu 
lating  the  duration  of  the  office,  does  the  power  of  removal 
belong?  And  second,  if  to  the  Executive,,  in  cases  confided  to 
him  by  the  Constitution,  can  Congress  give  any  duration  to  the 
office  not  subject  to  the  exercise  of  such  power?  (2  Story's 
Commentaries,  sec.  1537,  citing  I  Lloyd's  Debates,  511,  12.) 
The  latter  of  these  two  questions  has  not,  he  says,  been  raised, 
because  all  our  legislation  has  recognized  the  executive  power 
of  removal  as  in  full  force,  and  the  case  here  rests,  of  course, 
only  on  a  silent  practice,  which  had  the  recommendation  of 
convenience,  and  was  maintained  by  the  harmonious  co-opera 
tion  of  the  several  departments  of  the  Government,  and  a  well- 
authorized  confidence  in  the  Executive,  which  is  now  greatly 
disturbed,  if  not  altogether  destroyed.  As  regards,  however,  the 
former  of  these  questions,  they  are  equally  agreed  that  the  deci 
sion  was  an  anomalous  one.  Judge  Story  speaks  of  it  as  'con 
stituting  the  most  extraordinary  case,  in  the  history  of  the 
Government,  of  a  power  conferred  by  implication  on  the  Execu 
tive,  by  the  assent  of  a  bare  majority  in  Congress,  which  has 
not  been  questioned  on  many  other  occasions.'  (2  Commentaries, 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        629 

1543.)  Chancellor  Kent,  referring  to  the  fact  that  it  had  never 
been  made  the  subject  of  judicial  discussion,  and  that  the  con 
struction  given  in  1789  had  continued  to  rest  on  'this  loose,  inci 
dental,  and  declaratory  opinion  of  Congress,'  and  although  sug 
gesting  that  it  might  now  be  considered  'firmly  and  definitely 
settled,'  is  constrained  to  speak  of  it,  as  'a  striking  fact  in  the 
constitutional  history  of  our  Government,  that  a  power  so 
transcendent  as  that  which  places  at  the  disposal  of  the  Presi 
dent  alone,  the  tenure  of  every  executive  officer  appointed  by 
the  President  and  Senate,  should  depend  on  inference  merely, 
and  should  have  been  gratuitously  declared  by  the  First  Con 
gress  in  opposition  to  the  high  authority  of  the  Federalist,  and 
supported,  or  acquiesced  in,  by  some  of  those  distinguished  men 
who  questioned  or  denied  the  power  of  Congress  to  incorporate  a 
national  bank.'  (i  Kent's  Commentaries,  sec.  14,  pages  308-11.) 
The  Chancellor  does  not  speak  with  the  precision  of  the  lawyer, 
and  forgets  his  own  statement,  when  he  describes  it  as  a  power 
which  places  at  the  disposal  of  the  President  alone  the  tenure  of 
every  executive  officer  appointed  by  the  President  and  Senate. 
He  does  show,  however,  the  training  of  the  judge,  in  his  remark 
that  the  construction  based  on  such  foundations  might  now  be 
considered  as  'firmly  and  definitely  settled.'  Nobody  but  a  man 
with  a  religious  reverence  for  precedents,  could  have  supposed 
that  an  ephemeral  practice  of  forty  years'  continuance,  upon  a 
question  of  governmental  power  so  important  as  this,  could 
settle  forever  the  meaning  of  the  fundamental  law  of  a  great 
State.  It  required  six  centuries  of  struggle  to  settle  down  the 
constitution  of  England  on  the  basis  of  the  Great  Charter,  and 
no  parliamentary  precedent  of  the  reigns  even  of  the  Plantage- 
nets  or  the  Tudors,  was  allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  pro 
gressive  movement  that  culminated  in  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

"It  is  worthy  of  remark,  moreover,  that  neither  of  these 
justly  distinguished  jurists  has  intimated  a  doubt  as  to  the 
power  of  Congress  to  regulate  the  duration  of  the  inferior 
offices  in  such  a  way  as  to  take  them  entirely  out  of  the  control 
of  the  Executive.  Judge  Story,  on  the  contrary,  observes  that 
'as  far  as  Congress  has  the  power  to  regulate  and  delegate  the 
appointment  of  inferior  officers,  so  far  they  may  prescribe  the 
term  of  office,  the  manner  in  which  and  the  persons  by  whom 
the  removal  as  well  as  the  appointment  to  office  shall  be  made.' 
(2  Story's  Commentaries  sec.  1537,  citing  Marbury  vs.  Madi 
son,  i  Cranch,  137,  155.)  And  again:  'If  there  has  been  any 
aberration  it  will  be  difficult,  perhaps  impracticable,  now  to 
recall  the  practice  to  the  correct  theory.  But  at  all  events  it  will 
be  a  consolation  to  those  who  love  the  Union,  and  honor  a 


630  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

devotion  to  the  patriotic  discharge  of  duty,  that  in  regard  to 
inferior  offices,  which  probably  include  ninety-nine  out  of  the 
hundred,  the  remedy  for  any  permanent  abuse  is  still  within  the 
power  of  Congress  by  the  simple  expedient  of  requiring  the 
consent  of  the  Senate  in  such  cases.'  (Ibid.,  sec.  1544.)  And 
Chancellor  Kent  indorses  this  in  a  note,  referring  to  the  fre 
quency  of  the  exercise  of  his  power  by  President  Jackson,  as 
having  created  serious  doubts  as  to  the  propriety  of  the  con 
cession  by  the  First  Congress,  and  remarking  that  a  high 
authority  had  declared  it  to  be  in  the  power  of  Congress  to 
correct  this  by  placing  the  appointment  of  inferior  officers  in 
other  hands,  (i  Kent's  Commentaries,  309-11,  citing  3  Story, 

394-7-) 

"And  this  is  in  accordance  also  with  the  legislation  of  the 
Government  on  more  than  one  occasion,  although  it  is  assumed 
by  those  who  rest  upon  the  practice,  that  it  has  been  invariably 
the  other  way.  The  early  case  of  Marbury  vs.  Madison  proves 
this  beyond  dispute.  Marbury  was  a  justice  of  the  peace  for 
this  District,  appointed  by  John  Adams  just  before  his  retire 
ment,  under  the  authority  of  an  act  of  Congress  of  1801,  fixing 
the  term  at  five  years.  President  Jefferson  withheld  the  com 
mission  after  it  had  been  signed  and  registered.  If  he  could 
have  removed  the  officer,  it  would  have  been  idle  to  stand  upon 
the  delivery  of  the  commission,  but  it  was  assumed  by  the  court, 
and  conceded  on  all  hands,  that  he  was  not  removable,  except 
for  cause,  until  the  expiration  of  his  term. 

"But  even  in  the  case  of  an  office  determinable  at  pleasure, 
as  that  of  deputy  marshal,  an  act  passed  by  the  very  Congress 
of  1789  itself,  not  only  recognizes  and  asserts  the  right  to  take 
the  power  of  removal  from  the  President,  but  to  sever  it  from 
the  appointing  power  itself,  by  vesting  it  in  the  judges  of  the 
circuit  and  district  courts.  (Act  of  24th  September,  1789.) 
And  in  a  still  later  case,  (act  of  March  3,  1865,  section  twelve,) 
it  has  been  provided  that  where  an  officer  in  the  military  or 
naval  service,  who  may  be  dismissed  by  the  authority  of  the 
President,  shall  demand  a  trial,  he  shall  convene  a  court-mar 
tial,  and  if  they  shall  not  award  the  punishment  of  dismissal  or 
death,  or  the  court  shall  not  be  convened  within  six  months, 
the  order  of  dismissal  shall  be  void;  and  this  notwithstanding 
the  fact,  that  the  punishment  by  impeachment  is  confined  by  the 
Constitution  to  civil  officers,  and  therefore,  by  necessary  infer 
ence,  all  others  are  removable  in  a  different  way,  and  although, 
too,  the  President  is,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United  States. 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         631 

"To  show,  moreover,  that  this  was  the  interpretation  given 
to  the  legislative  action  of  1/89,  and  is  in  accordance  with 
judicial  opinion  in  the  States,  upon  analogous  provisions  in  their 
own  constitutions,  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  a  decision  of 
the  supreme  court  of  Pennsylvania,  made  as  early  as  1820,  and 
when  its  judges  were  unusually  eminent,  to  the  effect  that  the 
tenure  of  ministerial  offices  in  general  is  during  pleasure,  unless 
the  law  establishing  the  office  orders  it  otherwise.  (Com.  ex 
relatione  vs.  Bassier,  &c.,  5  S.  &  R.,  457.) 

"And  now,  having,  as  I  think,  ascertained  and  defined  the 
precise  extent  of  the  decision  supposed  to  have  been  made  in 
1789,  let  us  proceed  to  look  into  the  argument  by  which  it  was 
sustained,  and  ascertain  what  the  Constitution  itself  has  to  say 
on  this  subject. 

"It  is  agreed,  then,  on  all  hands,  that  the  power  of  removal 
must  reside  somewhere,  when  the  term  is  indefinite.  This  bill 
denies  it  to  the  President  alone,  in  all  cases  where  the  Senate 
has  shared  in  the  appointment;  or,  in  other  words,  declares  that 
nothing  short  of  the  power  that  makes  shall  unmake — which  is 
but  the  logical  result  of  the  doctrine  of  the  minority  in  1789, 
that  the  power  to  remove  is  included  in  or  but  an  incident  to  the 
power  to  appoint;  a  doctrine,  which  is  now  sustained,  as  I  shall 
show  hereafter,  by  the  authority  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States. 

"On  this  point,  however,  the  Constitution  is  silent,  except 
so  far  as  it  is  made  a  part  of  the  judgment  in  cases  of  conviction 
on  impeachment  for  'treason,  bribery,  or  other  high  crimes  and 
misdemeanors.'  Nobody  has  ever  pretended  that  it  was  any 
where  expressly  conferred  but  in  this  single  case,  where  it  is 
lodged  exclusively  with  Congress.  If  it  exists,  therefore,  at  all, 
it  is  only  by  implication  or  inference. 

"Taking  it,  however,  to  rest,  as  claimed,  either  upon  the 
power  to  appoint,  as  an  inseparable  incident  thereof,  or  on  the 
general  assignment  of  executive  powers  to  the  President  alone, 
it  becomes  important  to  look  into  the  provisions  of  that  instru 
ment  which  bear  upon  these  two  subjects. 

"And  first,  it  is  to  be  observed,  that  the  Constitution  nowhere 
vests  the  appointing  power  in  the  President  alone.  It  authorizes 
him  to  nominate,  but  only  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of 
the  Senate  to  appoint,  the  officers  therein  described,  and  'all 
others  that  might  be  established  by  law/  This,  therefore,  is  the 
general  rule. 

"The  exceptions,  if  they  can  be  so  termed,  are  first,  that 
'in  cases  of  vacancy  happening  during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,' 
and  when  that  body  is,  of  course,  in  no  condition  to  be  con- 


632  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

suited,  and  to  co-operate;  or,  in  other  words,  where  an  appoint 
ment  is  impracticable,  for  the  time  being,  under  the  rule,  the 
President  shall,  not  appoint,  but  merely  supply  the  interregnum, 
or  'fill  up  the  vacancy'  by  a  commission  which  shall  only  endure 
'until  the  end  of  the  next  session,'  or  until  they  shall  be  in  a 
condition  to  exercise  their  power  of  concurrence  in  or  rejection 
of  an  appointment:  and  secondly,  that  in  cases  of  inferior 
officers,  the  Congress  may  bestow  on  'the  President  alone,'  or 
the  heads  of  Departments,  or  the  courts,  the  privilege  of  appoint 
ing  without  the  advice  or  consent  of  the  Senate,  which  is  a 
recognition  of  the  rule,  and  makes  a  solemn  act  of  the  Legisla 
ture  necessary  to  dispense  with  it  even  in  inferior  cases. 

"It  would  seem,  therefore,  too  clear  for  dispute,  if  it  has 
not  the  force  of  a  self-evident  proposition,  that  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  intended  to  place  an  effective  check  upon  the 
President  in  this  important  matter,  by  denying  to  him  in  all 
cases  the  right  to  wield  this  formidable  power  alone,  except 
where  the  accidents  of  administration  might  render  it  tem 
porarily  necessary,  or  the  insignificance  of  the  place  might  make 
it  safe,  in  the  judgment  of  the  Legislature,  to  intrust  it  to  him 
from  time  to  time. 

"It  is  claimed,  however,  in  the  absence  of  any  direct  author 
ity  to  appoint,  and  in  the  face  of  the  strongest  implications  to 
the  contrary,  that  the  President  may  practically  defeat  the 
obvious  purpose  of  the  framers  of  the  instrument,  by  the  exercise 
of  the  power  to  remove  in  the  recess,  and  thereby  create  a 
vacancy,  which  he  may  fill  up  without  the  concurrence  of  the 
Senate,  or  by  appointing  to  an  office  already  full,  and  thus 
accomplishing  by  indirection  the  very  same  thing. 

"But  what  does  the  Constitution  say  on  the  subject?  Why, 
only  that  'the  President  shall  have  the  power  to  fill  up  all 
vacancies  that  may  happen  during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,  by 
granting  commissions  that  shall  expire  at  the  end  of  their  next 
session.' 

"The  power,  then,  is  not  to  appoint,  but  to  'fill  up.'  The 
vacancy  is  not  one  that  may  be  created,  but  one  that  may 
'happen.'  And  the  commission  is  not  one  that  is  indefinite,  but 
one  that  shall  expire,  by  its  own  limitation,  at  the  end  of  the  next 
session,  so  as  to  give  the  President  the  whole  of  that  session  to 
nominate. 

"Upon  this  transparent  phraseology  one  would  think  that 
there  could  be  no  ground  left  for  dispute.  The  case  provided 
for  is  that  of  'all  vacancies  that  may  happen'  Hap  is  but 
another  word  for  chance.  Ex  in  termini,  it  imports  accident  or 
casualty,  without  any  agency  on  the  part  of  the  President  in 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        633 

bringing  it  about.  And  such  is  the  construction  which  it  has 
received  from  the  best  intellects  of  the  nation.  Mr.  Hamilton, 
in  his  remarks  in  No.  77  of  the  Federalist,  in  the  same  language 
precisely,  as  applied  to  Senators,  describes  it  as  (an  express 
power  given  in  clear  and  unambiguous  terms  to  fill  casual 
vacancies.'  And  again  in  his  letter  to  James  McHenry,  ten 
years  afterward,  he  asserts  that  they  imply  casualty,  and  denote 
'such  offices  as,  having  been  once  filled,  become  vacant  by 
accidental  circumstances.' 

"And  in  accordance  with  this  idea,  when  Mr.  Madison, 
during  the  recess  of  1813,  appointed  ministers  to  negotiate  the 
treaty  at  Ghent,  upon  a  question  made  whether  it  was  the  case 
of  a  vacancy  or  a  new  creation,  the  Senate  is  reported  as  having 
entered  its  protest  against  it. 

"Again,  on  the  2Oth  April,  1822,  it  was  held  by  the  same 
body,  that  the  President  could  not  create  the  office  of  a  minister, 
and  make  appointments  during  the  recess,  it  being  their  under 
standing  that  the  vacancies  provided  for  were  such  as  occurred 
from  death,  resignation,  promotion,  or  removal;  that  the  word 
'happen'  had  relation  to  some  casualty  not  provided  for  by  law, 
and  that  if  the  Senate  was  in  session  when  the  office  was  created 
and  no  nomination  then  made,  he  could  not  appoint  during  the 
recess,  because  it  was  not  a  vacancy,  happening  at  that  time. 
In  many  instances  where  new  offices  were  created  a  special 
power  had  been  conferred  on  this  account  to  fill  them  during 
the  recess,  and  it  was  then  said  that  in  no  other  instances  had 
the  President  filled  such  vacant  offices  without  special  authority 
of  law.  (2  Story's  Commentaries,  1559,  citing  Sergeant  on  the 
Constitution;  2  Executive  Journal,  515,  500;  3  Executive  Jour 
nal,  297.) 

"And  this  opinion  is  affirmed  by  the  second  section  of  the 
act  of  9th  February,  1863,  which  provides  that  no  money  shall 
be  paid  out  of  the  Treasury  as  salary  to  any  person  appointed, 
during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,  to  fill  any  vacancy  in  any 
existing  office,  which  vacancy  existed  while  the  Senate  was  in 
session,  and  is  required  by  law  to  be  filled  by  and  with  the 
advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  until  such  appointee  shall 
have  been  confirmed. 

"And  to  show,  moreover,  that  the  earlier  practice  had 
conformed  to  this  theory,  may  be  added  the  remark  of  Mr. 
Calhoun  in  his  report  to  the  Senate  in  1835,  on  the  corrupting 
influence  of  the  President's  power  of  removal,  that  'so  long  as 
it  was  the  practice  to  continue  in  office  those  who  had  faithfully 
performed  their  duties,  this  patronage,  in  point  of  fact,  was 


634  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

limited  to  the  mere  power  of  nominating  to  accidental  vacancies, 
or  newly  created  offices.' 

''It  is  perfectly  obvious,  moreover,  from  the  tenure  of  the 
commissions  required  in  such  cases,  that  this  exceptional  pro 
vision  was  only  intended  to  meet  the  case  of  an  accident  occur 
ring  at  a  time  when  the  Senate  was  not  at  hand  to  be  consulted. 
To  supply  a  vacancy  is  one  thing,  and  a  thing  easily  understood; 
to  create  a  vacancy  is  a  thing  so  different,  as  must  have  necessi 
tated  a  different  phraseology,  and  suggested  a  more  stringent 
rule.  Nobody  would  pretend  that  a  removal,  by  the  usual 
process,  by  the  President,  while  the  Senate  was  in  session,  was 
a  case  of  vacancy  happening  at  that  time,  or  indeed  any  case  of 
vacancy  at  all.  A  new  nomination  approved  by  it,  in  a  case 
where  the  term  was  not  fixed,  would  operate,  no  doubt,  as  a 
supersedeas,  by  determining  the  office,  but  without  making  any 
vacancy  whatever ;  and  this  I  believe  is  the  way  in  which  the  thing 
has  been  generally  done.  I  do  not  know  that  there  are  any 
instances  wherein  a  removal  has  been  made  in  the  first  place, 
except,  it  may  be,  where  the  office  was  made  expressly  determina- 
ble  at  the  will  of  the  President.  If  he  may  make  a  vacancy  in 
any  case,  he  may  do  it  in  all,  divest  the  Senate  of  its  advisory 
power,  and  make  the  exception  the  rule.  All  he  has  to  do  is  to 
withhold  the  appointments  so  made  until  the  expiration  of  the 
session,  or,  upon  rejection  of  any  of  his  creatures,  recommission 
them  after  the  adjournment,  and  thus  perpetuate  the  power  in 
himself,  in  defiance  of  the  clear  intention  of  the  framers  of  the 
Constitution.  And  this  he  has  actually  done  to  such  an  extent, 
that  if  not  seasonably  checked,  the  Senate  itself  will  soon  have 
practically  ceased  to  share  all  that  part  of  the  appointing  power 
which  it  may  not  already  have  substantially  surrendered  by  its 
complaisance. 

"Nor  does  it  seem  improbable  that  this  has  been  the  studied 
purpose  in  high  quarters,  in  view  of  the  imputed  illegitimacy  of 
the  body  which  is  now  supposed  to  be  'hanging,  as  it  were,  on 
the  verge  of  the  Constitution.'  The  law  officer  of  the  Govern 
ment  has  just  been  asked,  with  special  reference,  perhaps,  to 
the  act  of  1863,  whether  a  vacancy  happening  during  the  session, 
is  not  a  vacancy  happening  during  the  recess;  and  he  answers 
in  the  traditional  spirit  of  an  Attorney  General,  with  an  opinion 
that  blots  out  of  the  Constitution  the  words  'that  may  happen 
during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,'  by  making  it  entirely  indiffer 
ent  what  may  be  the  causes  by  which  that  vacancy  is  produced, 
or  at  what  time  it  may  occur.  Nay,  more.  The  very  commis 
sions  now  issued  will  be  found  to  run,  not  only  at  'the  pleasure 
of  the  President/  where  the  tenure  is  indefinite,  but  even  in 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        635 

cases  of  appointments  made  during  the  recess,  where  the  very 
terms  are  prescribed  by  the  Constitution  itself,  are  interpolated 
with  the  same  anti-republican  phraseology,  in  utter  disregard 
of  the  express  provisions  of  that  instrument. 

"To  the  whole  claim,  however,  of  so  formidable  a  preroga 
tive,  it  ought  to  be  sufficient  answer :  first,  that  the  Constitution 
nowhere  confers  any  such  power,  except  in  the  cases  already 
stated,  and  that  from  this  exception,  by  well-settled  rules  of  con 
struction,  the  inference  is  a  legitimate  one,  that  it  was  not 
intended  to  be  exercised  in  any  other  way,  in  civil  cases  at  all 
events;  and  second,  that  the  exception  which  gives  to  Congress 
the  authority  to  vest  the  appointments  to  inferior  offices  in  the 
President  alone,  is  as  utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  idea  that  he 
can  remove  alone,  and  without  cause,  in  the  case  of  superior 
offices,  as  is  the  provision  for  impeachment  and  trial,  with  the 
notion  of  a  summary  ejection  without  any  hearing  at  all. 

"But,  then,  it  is  insisted  that  this  mode  of  removal  would  be 
inconvenient,  because  the  machinery  is  too  elaborate  for  ordinary 
use,  and  would  be  entirely  inadequate  to  meet  the  exigencies  of 
a  vast  and  multiplied  service,  and  the  many  unforeseen  con 
tingencies  that  might  necessitate  the  existence  of  a  jurisdiction 
more  summary  and  extended;  and  hence  the  illogical  inference 
of  a  power  in  the  President  to  remove  where  the  Constitution 
itself  has  not  spoken. 

"I  will  not  stop  to  examine  the  argument  ab  inconvenienti, 
even  though  so  great  a  name  as  that  of  Coke  may  be  invoked 
to  show  that  it  prevails  in  law,  where  one  construction  would  be 
more  mischievous  than  another.  It  may  be  inconvenient  to 
impeach  in  all  cases.  It  was  hardly  expected,  perhaps,  that  it 
would  be  necessary.  It  may  be  inconvenient  to  the  President 
and  his  southern  friends,  that  he  is  not  endowed  with  dictatorial 
powers,  such  as  he  has  been  claiming  and  exercising.  It  may 
be  inconvenient  to  him  that  he  cannot  indulge  the  parasites  who 
swarm  around  him,  by  the  unrestricted  use  of  the  guillotine 
under  which  so  many  heads  have  already  fallen.  It  would  be 
certainly  very  convenient  to  him  and  his  southern  friends,  but 
very  inconvenient  to  the  nation,  that  he  should  be  allowed  to  do 
all  the  things  that  this  bill  is  intended  to  prevent.  But  all  this 
is  only  an  argument  in  favor  of  a  change  in  the  law,  or  an 
amendment  of  the  Constitution,  which,,  in  the  view  of  the  Presi 
dent,  is  not  now  amendable,  for  reasons  that  would  dethrone 
Congress,  and  unseat  himself. 

"Is  it,  then,  a  necessary  power  ?  And  if  so,  why  ?  Because, 
it  is  said,  the  officer  may  prove  incompetent  or  unfaithful,  and 
the  public  interests  may  therefore  require  his  dismissal.  Granted 


636  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

that  they  may.  What  follows?  That  he  may  remove  him? 
That  is  a  non  sequitur.  The  result  of  an  admitted  necessity, 
without  any  constitutional  provision  to  meet  it,  it  would  seem 
rather  to  be  that  the  case  was  left  to  be  provided  for  by  law, 
than  that  a  power  so  dangerous  should  be  raised  by  implication 
in  the  President.  If  there  be  a  necessity,  Congress  can  provide 
for  it,  under  its  authority  'to  make  all  laws  which  shall  be  neces 
sary  or  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  all  powers  vested  in 
the  Government,  or  in  any  department  thereof.'  It  is  a  capital 
error  to  suppose  that  the  Executive  is  endowed  with  the  inci 
dental  power  to  legislate  for  constitutional  defects  which  touch 
his  office.  To  claim  that  it  belongs  to  him,  in  virtue  thereof,  is 
no  more  or  less  than  the  assertion  of  a  dictatorial  power  to  the 
extent  of  the  very  terms  used  by  the  Romans  in  conferring  it. 
If  the  President  is  to  do  everything  which  in  his  opinion  the 
public  interests  may  require,  then  every  defect  in  the  Constitu 
tion  or  laws  is  to  be  supplied,  and  every  disproportion  sym 
metrized  by  him.  And  this,  it  seems,  is  the  opinion  of  the 
present  law  adviser  of  the  Government,  as  expressed  in  his 
recent  answer  to  the  inquiry  as  to  the  power  of  the  President  to 
fill  vacancies  occurring  during  the  session  of  the  Senate.  It  is 
with  him  a  necessary  power,  and  though  it  may  be  so  wielded,  as 
he  admits,  as  to  oust  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Senate  entirely, 
he  marches  up  to  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  with  a  courage  that 
might  have  graced  a  better  cause,  and  thinks  to  put  us  off  with 
the  answer,  that  it  is  no  objection  to  a  power  that  it  may  be 
abused.  If  it  had  been  an  express  power,  the  argument  would 
have  been  a  good  one.  Where,  however,  it  is  only  implied,  as 
here,  a  well-trained  lawyer,  who  could  forget  his  office  in  his 
profession,  would  have  said  at  once  that  the  possibility  of  such 
an  abuse  was  a  conclusive  argument  against  the  existence  of  the 
power.  It  would  be  asking,  perhaps,  too  much,  to  expect  that 
an  officer  who  holds  his  life  at  the  pleasure  of  the  President 
should  be  found  standing  in  the  way  of  the  prerogative  in  times 
like  these.  When  was  it  ever  heard  that  an  Attorney  General 
in  High  Prerogative  times  had  faltered  in  the  support  of  the 
most  extravagant  of  the  pretensions  of  the  Crown  ?  How  many 
judges  have  proved  capable  of  emulating  the  sturdy  virtue  of 
Sir  Edward  Coke,  before  the  Act  of  Settlement  that  made  their 
tenure  independent  of  the  royal  will?  Possibly  there  are  men 
here  who  are  prepared  to  indorse  such  slavish  views.  Every 
traitor  in  the  South,  and  every  Democrat  in  the  North  who 
sympathized  with  him,  would  doubtless  agree  to  them,  as  they 
have  agreed  so  generally,  that  the  President  might  organize 
State  governments,  and  ordain  State  constitutions,  while  we  are 


637 

denied  the  humble  privilege  of  suggesting  amendments  in  the 
interests  of  liberty,  and  denounced  as  no  better  than  'tinkers' — 
I  was  going  to  say  tailors — by  the  minions  and  upstarts,  the 
pampered  and  insolent  menials,  who  lick  the  royal  hand,  and 
look  up  beseechingly  for  the  'bread  and  butter'  that  are  flung 
contemptuously  into  their  hungry  jaws. 

"In  default,  however,  of  the  arguments  from  inconvenience 
and  necessity,  is  there  anything  in  the  suggestion  that  this  power 
of  removal  is  a  part  or  incident  of  the  power  of  appointment? 
If  there  were,  it  would  not  help  the  case,  because  the  appoint 
ing  power  is  nowhere  lodged  in  the  President  alone — the 
power  to  act  during  the  recess  being  a  mere  authority  to  fill  up 
vacancies  ad  interim — and  the  power  to  remove,  on  this  argu 
ment,  could  only  be  exercisable  in  conjunction  with  the  Senate. 

"But  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has  solemnly 
decided  that  there  is,  and  has  on  this  point  affirmed  the  opinion 
of  the  minority  in  the  Congress  of  1789.  The  case  Ex  relatione 
Heenan  (13  Peters,  230,)  which  was  that  of  the  removal,  by 
the  presiding  judge,  of  a  clerk  of  the  district  court  of  Louisiana, 
distinctly  rules  that,  in  the  absence  of  all  constitutional  pro 
vision,  or  statutory  regulation,  it  is  a  sound  and  necessary  rule 
to  consider  the  power  of  removal  as  incident  to  the  power  of 
appointment.  The  removal  there  was  by  the  judge  who 
appointed.  Upon  the  theory  of  the  majority  the  power  would 
have  resulted  to  the  President. 

"And  here  I  might  rest  the  argument  with  those  who  stand 
upon  authority,  and  are  willing  to  accept  a  judicial  opinion  in 
the  place  of  a  legislative  precedent. 

"But  assuming  that  this  power  is  but  an  incident,  and  so 
belonging  to  the  Senate,  in  conjunction  with  the  President,  it  is 
not  only  insisted  that  where  no  tenure  is  prescribed,  the  officer 
must  necessarily  hold  at  the  will  of  the  appointing  power,  but 
assumed  that  no  other  tenure  is  admissible. 

"It  is  not  necessary,  however,  that  the  tenure  should  be 
indefinite ;  and  it  is  perhaps  not  safe,  and  not  strictly  in  harmony 
with  the  spirit  of  our  institutions,  to  leave  it  so,  if  the  power 
claimed  resides  with  the  President,  and  may  be  exercised  with 
out  cause,  or  without  other  reason  than  the  want  of  personal 
subserviency  to  himself. 

"The  Constitution  looks  to  the  creation  and  establishment 
of  all  offices  under  it  by  the  act  of  the  law-making  power,  and 
in  no  case  but  that  of  the  judges,  and  appointments  made  to  fill 
up  vacancies  ad  interim,  undertakes  to  prescribe  the  tenure  by 
which  they  are  to  be  held.  But  the  power  to  create  an  office 
involves,  of  course,  the  power  to  determine  upon  its  duration  and 


638  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

duties,  to  say  what  it  shall  be  and  when  it  shall  expire;  the 
power,  in  short,  to  make  all  laws  which  may,  in  the  judgment  of 
Congress,  be  necessary  and  proper  for  its  regulation,  including 
the  period  of  service  and  the  causes  of  removal.  I  know  no 
limitation  on  the  power  of  Congress  here,  except  in  the  assign 
ment  to  the  President,  in  all  cases  but  those  of  inferior  offices, 
of  the  right  to  nominate,  and,  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent 
of  the  Senate,  to  appoint.  Whenever  an  office  is  created  of  the 
superior  class,  that  power  devolves,  under  the  Constitution,  upon 
him,  and  cannot,  of  course,  be  taken  away.  But  with  this  excep 
tion  only,  and  the  cases  of  judges,  and  of  appointments  to  fill 
vacancies,  their  jurisdiction  over  the  subject  is  absolute.  If 
there  be  anything  to  restrain  or  limit  it  beyond  this,  it  behooves 
those  who  so  assert  to  show  where  it  is  to  be  found. 

"It  is  a  fair  inference  from  the  provisions  just  recited, 
that  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  intended  to  leave  the  ques 
tion  of  official  tenure  in  all  other  than  the  excepted  cases  to 
congressional  regulation.  To  suppose  that  they  designed  it  to 
be  indefinite,  and  therefore  determinable  at  the  mere  will  of  the 
appointing  power,  and  without  responsibility  for  abuse,  even 
though  that  power  were  understood  to  comprehend  the  Senate, 
would  be  a  violent  presumption  indeed.  To  conclude  that  they 
intended  to  make  it  determinable  at  the  mere  will  of  the  Presi 
dent,  either  with  or  without  cause,  in  view  of  the  extreme  jeal 
ousy  with  which  that  department  was  regarded,  is  absolutely 
incredible. 

"I  take  it,  therefore,,  that  Congress  may  dispose  of  this 
question,  even  in  the  case  of  the  superior  offices,  by  defining 
the  tenure  and  changing  the  character  of  the  estate,  so  as,  in 
effect,  to  substitute  its  own  will  for  that  of  the  President,  by 
giving  to  it  the  form  of  law,  in  accordance  with  the  principles 
on  which  this  Government  is  founded.  An  executive  will  is  only 
admissible  in  the  case  of  a  despotic  Government,  of  which  it  is 
the  very  essence  and  expression.  The  'sic  volo,  sic  jubco;  stet 
pro  ratione  voluntas,'  is  not  the  maxim  for  a  republican  State. 

"But  there  is  another  ground — the  one  assumed  by  Madison, 
and  perhaps  the  only  one  on  which  these  royal  pretensions  have 
ever  been  plausibly  defended — and  that  is,  that  the  exercise 
of  the  power  of  removal,  the  same  being  in  its  very  nature  an 
executive  function,  falls  necessarily  within  the  meaning  of  that 
clause  of  the  Constitution  which  declares  that  'the  executive 
power  shall  be  vested  in  a  President  of  the  United  States ;'  that 
all  executive  powers  not  denied  or  lodged  elsewhere,  are  thereby 
vested  in  the  President ;  and  that  every  participation  of  the  Sen- 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  ''RESTORATION"         639 

ate  is  an  exception  to  a  general  principle,  and  ought  to  be 
taken  strictly. 

"This  argument  assumes,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  power 
of  removal  is  essentially  an  executive  power,  as  I  understand  it 
to  be  just  now  asserted  by  the  Attorney  General  to  be.  I  know 
no  reason  to  warrant  the  assumption.  Whether  it  be  so  or  not, 
will  depend,  I  suppose,  on  what  the  Constitution  makes  it. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  act  itself,  that  decides  it  to  be  a  minis 
terial  function  only.  It  involves  the  exercise  of  a  discretion  that 
does  not  belong  to  ministerial  officers.  So  far  as  the  Constitu 
tion  makes  provision  for  its  exercise,  it  gives  it  a  judicial  char 
acter  entirely.  True  to  the  idea  on  which  our  institutions  rest, 
it  leaves  nothing  here  to  the  mere  will  of  the  Executive.  No 
man's  fortune  is  made  dependent  on  a  caprice  that  would  make 
him  a  slave.  If  an  officer  is  to  be  removed,  it  declares  in  what 
manner  it  shall  be  done,  and  that  it  shall  be  only  on  sufficient 
cause,  and  with  the  privilege  of  an  impartial  hearing,  which  this 
bill  is  intended  to  secure.  To  infer,  as  seems  to  be  imported 
by  the  argument,  that  it  is  an  executive  function,  merely  because 
the  officer  who  is  the  subject  of  it  may  happen  to  be  an  execu 
tive  officer,  would  be  the  most  inconsequent  of  conclusions.  If 
it  were  true,  then  the  election  or  removal  of  a  President,  or  a 
Congressman,  or  a  judge,  would  be  an  executive,  legislative,  or 
judicial  act,  according  to  the  quality  of  the  subject  with  which 
it  had  to  deal,  and  without  reference  to  the  manner  in  which 
the  act  might  be  performed.  It  is  the  manner  of  performance, 
however,  that  is  to  determine  the  character  of  the  act.  It  is  a 
possible  case,  I  suppose,  that  a  man  may  be  legislated  out  of 
office,  by  repealing  the  law  creating  it,  or  making  the  tenure 
dependent  on  the  will  of  Congress.  Clearly  a  circuit  or  a 
district  judge  may  remove  the  clerk  whom  he  has  appointed, 
because  that  power  is  held  to  be  an  incident  of  the  power  to 
appoint,  wherever  the  tenure  is  indefinite;  but  nobody  has  ever 
claimed  that  the  President  can  do  it,  or  would  think  of  calling 
the  act  an  executive  one.  If  Mr.  Madison  and  the  Attorney 
General  were  right,  however,  in  claiming  it  as  an  essentially 
executive  function,  the  decision  in  ex  parte  Heenan  was  errone 
ous,  and  the  power  belonged  to  the  President  alone. 

"If,  however,  the  assumption,  that  the  power  of  appointment 
or  removal  was  a  purely  executive  one,  was  without  warrant,  as 
I  think  it  was,  there  is  an  end,  of  course,  to  the  argument  based 
upon  it,  that  the  participation  of  the  Senate  was  an  exception  to 
a  general  principle,  and  ought,  therefore,  to  be  strictly  con 
strued. 


640  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"But  even  though  the  function  were,  in  its  essence,  an 
executive  one,  it  does  not  then  follow  that  it  was  conferred  on 
the  President,  by  the  clause  which  vests  the  executive  power 
in  him,  unless  it  can  be  held  that  all  power  that  would  be 
regarded  as  executive  in  England,  passed  by  the  general  grant 
— as  it  is  claimed  to  be — whether  it  was  embraced  within  the 
scope  and  purview  of  the  Constitution  or  not.  Mr.  Madison 
insisted  that  the  clause  in  question  carried  everything  that  was 
not  either  expressly  denied,  or  lodged  in  other  hands.  If  it  did, 
there  is  no  prerogative  of  the  British  Crown  that  might  not  be 
claimed  for  him,  because  there  are  no  negative  words  to  restrain 
his  powers.  We  must  look,  however,  to  the  Constitution  itself 
in  order  to  interpret  the  intent  of  the  grant — if  it  is  to  be  so 
considered.  It  is  bad  logic  to  infer  that  anything  passes  by 
it  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Constitution  at  all,  because  that 
would  enlarge  the  grant  beyond  the  purview  of  the  instrument. 
If  he  had  qualified  his  statement,  by  saying  that  it  carried  every 
thing  within  the  scope  and  spirit  of  the  Constitution,  that  was 
purely  executive,  and  not  denied  expressly  or  by  implication,  he 
would  have  conformed  to  a  rule  of  construction,  that  in  the 
search  for  truth  is  universally  recognized,  and  absolutely  essen 
tial  to  light  up  the  devious  passages  and  darkened  chambers,  that 
so  often  perplex  the  inquirer  in  the  exploration  of  the  meaning 
of  the  lawgiver.  There  was  no  more  reason  for  excepting  an 
express  denial  than  an  implied  one,  and  no  excuse  for  the  omis 
sion  when  he  was  arguing  the  case  of  an  implied  or  inferential 
power.  But  to  infer  the  existence  of  that  power  from  language 
so  general,  without  reference  to  the  context,  or  the  subject-mat 
ter,  and  in  the  face  of  an  express  provision  pointing  out  the 
method  of  impeachment,  is  something  in  the  way  of  argument, 
that  not  even  the  deservedly  great  reputation  of  Mr.  Madison 
himself  can  commend  to  the  favorable  judgment  of  a  disciplined 
logician  of  the  present  day. 

"It  seems  to  have  been  considered,  however,  that  the  power 
of  removal  was  conferred  by  a  sort  of  necessary  implication, 
because  the  President  is  the  responsible  head  to  whom  all 
others  are  subordinate,  and  bound  by  his  oath  for  the  faithful 
execution  of  the  law,  and  that  the  power  was  incidental  to  the 
duty,  and  might  be  requisite  for  its  fulfillment. 

"Whether  this  much-talked  of  responsibility  of  the  Presi 
dent  amounts  to  anything  in  practice,  or  can  be  held  to  go 
beyond  an  honest  endeavor  on  his  part  to  see  that  the  laws  are 
faithfully  executed,  so  far  as  he  is  endowed  with  the  means  of 
enforcing  them,  is  more  than  can  be  safely  assumed,  and  more, 
I  think,  than  any  friend  of  the  Executive  would  care  to  affirm. 


jcrsus  "RESTORATION"        641 

It  does  not,  however,  follow,  ex  necessitate,  that  although  there 
were  a  failure  of  duty  on  the  part  of  the  officer,  the  power  of 
removal  would  then  belong  to  him  either  qua  Executive,  or 'as 
general  residuary  legatee  or  trustee  under  the  Constitution.  It 
is  neither  essential  nor  desirable  that  the  officer  should  be 
responsible  to  him,  or  subject  to  his  will.  This  would  be  to  turn 
the  faces  of  the  public  servants  in  the  direction  of  the  President, 
just  as  the  fire  worshipper  salutes  the  opening  glories  of  the  king 
of  day,  or  the  sun-flower  is  supposed  to  'swing  the  circle'  of  the 
horizon  in  adoration  of  its  God.  There  is  a  responsibility  to 
the  law,  as  there  is  a  way  of  removal  indicated  by  it,  which  is 
in  nowise  dependent  on  the  executive  will,  that  holds  the  officer 
10  the  performance  of  his  duties,  and  is  the  only  practical  security 
for  those  who  are  interested  in  it.  Any  other  is  more  imaginary 
than  real,  so  long  as  it  is  enough  for  the  President  himself  to  say 
that  he  is  irresponsible  because  he  is  without  power  in  the 
premises.  He  would  be  equally  so  in  effect  with  all  the  power 
that  he  claims.  He  may  say  that  he  wants  more  than  the  Con 
stitution  intended  to  give  him,  that  it  is  our  interest  that  he 
should  be  be  gratified,  and  our  necessity  that  he  should  be 
enabled  to  do  our  work ;  and  a  facile  Attorney  General,  holding 
his  own  place  by  what  he  regards  as  the  necessary  tenure  of 
executive  pleasure,  will  be  always  found  to  attribute  to  him  all 
he  covets,  upon  the  convenient  plea  of  an  overruling  public 
necessity.  He  will  do  this  naturally,  because  he  sees  no  power 
in  the  state,  except  the  one  under  whose  shadow  he  reposes.  If 
he  cannot  torture  the  Constitution  into  a  grant  of  it,  he  will 
raise  an  incidental  authority  out  of  a  supposed  necessity,  for  the 
fulfillment  of  a  general  duty.  The  framers  of  the  Constitution 
supposed  that  it  might  require  an  express  grant  even  to  the  legis 
lative  department,  to  make  such  laws  as  might  be  necessary  and 
proper  for  carrying  into  execution  all  the  powers  vested  in  the 
Government.  But  they  did  not  stop  here.  They  looked  to 
legislation  only  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  other  departments, 
and  provided  them  an  auxiliary  in  Congress  to  aid  them  in  the 
execution  of  their  duties.  They  have  done  away,  therefore,  with 
the  necessity  of  a  resort  to  incidental  powers  in  the  Executive. 
If  there  is  a  casus  aanissus  in  the  law  it  is  for  Congress  to  apply 
the  remedy.  But  it  required  no  constitutional  provision  for  this 
purpose.  Every  Government  has  the  inherent,  because  neces 
sary,  power  of  regulating  the  tenure  and  conduct  of  its  own 
officers,  and  displacing  them  at  its  own  will,  except  where  it  is 
expressly  forbidden  by  its  fundamental  law.  If  the  law  is  silent 
or  defective  it  imports  no  surrender  of  so  important  a  function, 
and  no  lapse  to  the  executive  magistrate. 


642  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"But  what  is  there  at  last  in  the  clause  that  vests  the 
executive  power  in  the  President?  Nothing  more  than  in  the 
corresponding  clauses  that  vest  the  legislative  power  in  Con 
gress,  and  the  judicial  in  the  courts.  In  any  sense,  it  is  but  a 
distribution  or  assignment  to  each  of  these  departments,  of  its 
appropriate  share  of  the  powers  actually  conferred  on  the 
Government  by  the  Constitution.  To  say  that  this  is  in  the 
nature  of  a  grant  that  passes  all  power  that  may  in  any  sense 
be  regarded  as  executive,  whether  conferred  by  that  instrument 
or  not,  is  something  in  the  way  of  construction,  that  can  find 
no  more  favor  with  the  statesman  than  with  the  lawyer.  In  an 
absolute  monarchy,  where  everything  depends  upon  a  single  will, 
all  powers  may  be  said  to  be  executive,  because  there  is  no  law 
but  that  will,  which  judges  and  executes  itself.  It  will  hardly  be 
contended  that  the  clause  in  question  was  intended  to  make  the 
will  of  the  Executive  so  large  a  part  of  the  administration  of 
this  Government. 

"Is  it  true,  then,  that  upon  such  a  case  as  this,  a  mere 
acquiescence,  or  even  a  vicious  practice  of  three  quarters  of  a 
century,  is  to  canonize  a  doctrine  that  is  so  manifestly  in  con 
flict  with  the  spirit  of  our  Government,  and  the  very  letter  of 
our  Constitution?  I  have  asked  on  another  occasion — I  now 
repeat  the  question — what  is  a  century  in  the  life  of  a  State? 
What  would  be  thought,  moreover,  of  a  constitutional  amend 
ment,  or  a  declaratory  law,  broadly  enunciating  and  establishing 
the  doctrine,  that  the  President  may  appoint  and  remove  all  offi 
cers  whose  tenure  is  not  made  by  the  Constitution  dependent  on 
good  behavior,  of  his  own  unassisted  volition,  and  without 
regard  to  the  merits  or  defaults  of  the  objects  of  his  bounty  or 
his  displeasure?  Would  Congress  or  the  people  agree  to  such 
a  proposition?  And  yet  this  is  precisely  what  is  now  claimed 
for  him,  and  what  he  is  now  actually  doing,  on  the  hypothesis 
of  a  Cabinet  minister,  that  the  offices  of  the  Government,  as  the 
rightful  appanage  of  the  Crown,  are  his  property,  and  those  who 
fill  them  were  intended  to  be  the  mere  creatures  of  his  will. 

"When  it  was  suggested  in  the  debate  of  1789,  that  this 
enormous  power  might  be  thus  abused  to  the  destruction  of  our 
liberties,  the  answer  was,  that  this  was  impossible,  and  would 
constitute  a  clearly  impeachable  offense,  if  done,  and  upon  this 
point  there  was  apparently  no  divided  sentiment.  Since  that 
time,  and  especially  after  the  lapse  of  the  first  forty  years,  it  is 
not  to  be  denied  that  the  patronage  of  the  Government  has 
more  than  once  been  brought  in  conflict  with  the  freedom,  not 
only  of  elections,  but  of  opinion.  It  was  reserved  for  us  to 
hear  it  publicly  and  defiantly  declared,  for  the  first  time  in  our 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  ''RESTORATION"         643 

history,  to  be  the  settled  intention  of  the  Executive  to  use  the 
patronage  we  gave  him — ay,  to  foot  the  objects  of  his  prede 
cessor's  trust,  as  he  'would  spurn  a  stranger  cur,  over  his  thresh 
old' — for  the  purpose  of  overruling  the  judgment  of  Congress, 
and  bending  the  whole  nation  to  his  will;  and  the  results  of 
the  elections  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  so  happily  overruled 
by  the  healthful  influences  of  the  country,  show  that  it  was  no 
idle  menace  on  his  part. 

"But  what  avails  either  the  supervisory  power  of  the  Sen 
ate,  or  the  remedy  by  impeachment,  which  was  relied  on  by  the 
Congress  of  1789,  as  against  a  high  delinquent  who  holds  the 
spoils  of  a  nation  in  his  hands?  Has  the  constitutional  brake 
been  put  down  even  where  it  might  have  been?  And  if  it  were, 
how  is  it  to  help  us,  when  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Senate  is 
ousted  by  the  many  ingenious  devices  of  tyranny,  that  have 
found  a  ready  support  in  the  opinions  of  the  law  officers  of  the 
Government?  May  it  not  be  said  with  truth,  and  without 
offense,  that  the  Senate  itself  has  tacitly  countenanced,  if  not 
approved,  removals  for  opinion's  sake — the  very  offense  that 
would  have  warranted  an  impeachment,  in  the  judgment  of  the 
Congress  of  1789 — by  confirming  nominations  made  obviously 
on  no  other  grounds  ?  What,  then,  are  we  to  hope  from  the  slow 
and  doubtful  and,  perhaps,  obnoxious  process  of  impeachment, 
where  the  criminal  is  a  President,  and  a  vote  of  two  thirds  is 
required  to  convict?  If  you  would  impeach  successfully,  you 
must  strip  him  of  his  power  over  the  fortunes  of  the  citizen. 
No  glittering  bauble  must  be  allowed  to  dazzle  the  vision,  or 
tempt  the  cupidity  or  the  ambition  of  either  the  prosecutor  or 
the  judge.  No  army  of  stipendiaries  must  be  allowed  to  sur 
round  his  person  and  depend  upon  his  will.  Invested  with  all 
these  imperial  prerogatives,  and  backed  by  the  power  of  the 
sword,  another  President,  with  more  discretion  and  wiser  coun 
selors,  may  threaten  the  public  peace,  and  threaten  it  more 
successfully,  by  flinging  himself  into  the  arena,  with  an  array 
more  formidable  than  either  the  Household  Swiss  or  the  incip 
ient  Praetorian  guard  who  lately  mustered  on  the  royal  summons, 
and  disputing  with  you  the  mastery  of  the  empire. 

"Have  not  the  people  been  already  told  by  the  Executive 
himself  that  we  were  too  lavish  of  our  confidence,  and  that 
they  owed  it  to  his  forbearance  and  humility  alone  that  he 
had  not  accepted  the  crown,  and  endued  himself  in  the  purple 
that  we  had  offered  him?  Have  they  not  been  asked  by  his 
chief  adviser  whether  they  would  have  him  for  President  or 
King?  Reduced  to  his  constitutional  nakedness,  he  is  still 
formidable  enough,  but  not  so  formidable  as  to  endanger 


644  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

our  liberties.  What  is  he  without  the  use  of  the  unre 
stricted  patronage  that  he  commands?  But  for  that,  is  it 
within  the  range  of  probability  than  any  Executive  would 
have  ventured  to  insult  and  defy  the  loyal  people  of  the 
nation,  by  denouncing  its  high  legislative  council — the  constitu 
tional  depositary  of  its  will — as  a  body  of  usurpers — 'traitors  on 
the  other  end  of  the  line' — in  actual  rebellion  against  the  South, 
and  proclaiming  that  it  was  to  his  self-denial  only  that  they 
were  indebted  for  the  preservation  of  their  liberties?  But  for 
the  prestige  which  it  gives  him,  who  would  have  thought  it 
necessary  to  inquire  whether  the  President  would  recognize  the 
next  Congress,  or  submit  to  the  public  will,  or  favor  the  adop 
tion  of  the  constitutional  amendment  by  the  rebel  States?  If 
he  were  indeed  the  'humble  individual'  we  have  so  often  heard 
of,  who  would  send,  or  who  would  listen  to  the  daily  bulletins 
announcing  royal  conferences  upon  the  settlement  of  the  nation, 
or  imperial  resolves  upon  the  great  questions  of  war  and  peace 
with  neighboring  States?  Without  the  power  to  reward  his 
favorites,  by  putting  a  gold  chain  about  their  necks,  and  lifting 
them  to  the  highest  places  in  the  kingdom,  where  was  that 
spoil-engendered  and  spoil-inspired  array — that  formidable 
shape — 

"  'If  shape  it  might  be  called  that  shape  had  none 
Distinguishable  in  member,  joint,  or  limb, 
Or  substance  might  be  called  that  shadow  seemed' — 

'the  National  Union  party?'  Who  is  there,  in  that  case,  of  all 
the  menials  who  have  re-echoed  the  classic  objurgations  with 
which  the  representative  body  of  this  nation  has  been  assailed, 
that  would  have  been  so  poor  to  do  their  author  reverence? 
\Vhat  else  than  the  abject  servility  that  flatters  and  intoxicates 
— unless  it  were  the  Providence  that  sent  out  Pharoah  with  his 
captains  in  the  pursuit  of  the  fugitives  of  Israel — could  have 
inspired  the  royal  progress  and  the  royal  speech,  and  launched  its 
victim  on  that  crusade  which  ended  so  unhappily  for  himself? 
May  I  not  ask,  'Upon  what  other  meat  has  this  our  Caesar  fed 
that  he  is  grown  so  great?'  Pass  this  bill,  and  the  bloated  and 
exaggerated  power  that  now  'bestrides  this  land  like  a  Colossus,' 
and  bids  us  all  'to  hide  between  its  legs  and  find  ourselves  dis 
honorable  graves/  will  sink  down  at  once  into  its  constitutional 
and  healthful  proportions.  Pass  this  bill,  and  you  may  dispense 
with  the  dead  letter  of  the  impeaching  power,  because  no  future 
President  will  then  presume  either  to  depose,  or  ignore  the 
legislative  authority  of  this  nation,  or  to  refuse  obedience  to  the 
high  behests  of  the  people,  as  expressed  through  their  Repre 
sentatives.  Heed  not  a  vicious  precedent,  as  big  with  ruin  as 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"         645 

the  primal  fault,  the  plucking  of  the  fruit  'whose  mortal  taste 
brought  death  into  the  world.'  What  though  the  Fathers  may 
have  erred,  as  did  the  first?  Their  fault  may  be  repaired.  It 
is  of  no  consequence  to  us  what  the  Congress  of  1789  may  have 
decided,  or  what  any  of  their  successors  may  have  acquiesced 
in,  if  they  were  wrong,  and  the  life  of  the  nation  has  been 
imperiled  by  their  error.  The  public  interests,  the  safety  of  the 
State,  the  sentiments  of  the  people,,  all  demand  some  measure 
of  the  kind  which  this  bill  proposes ;  and  this  Congress 
will  fail  in  its  duty,  and  disappoint  the  just  expecta 
tions  of  its  constituents,  if  it  adjourns  without  providing  it. 
Reject  it,  and  the  golden  opportunity — the  ebb  of  the  tide  that 
has  gone  back  under  the  earthquake  shock  of  the  ballot-box,  and 
nowr  invites  you  to  build  up  a  dike  that  the  returning  waters 
shall  never  overleap — is  gone,  perhaps,  forever.  It  is  not  often 
that  a  President  comes  in  with  that  kind  of  courage  which  is 
required  for  the  betrayal  of  his  party  and  his  country,,  or  the 
abandonment  of  the  principles  and  pledges  on  which  he  was 
elected.  It  has  never  happened  before — and  perhaps  never  will 
again — that  the  party  so  betrayed  has  been  honest  enough,  to 
rling  the  offices  of  the  Government  behind  it,  like  the  temptation 
in  the  wilderness,  and  strong  enough,  and  courageous  enough,  to 
grapple  successfully  with  the  hydra  it  had  unwittingly  engen 
dered. 

"The  people  are  now  here  in  their  unclouded  power.  They 
have  taken  the  Government  into  their  own  hands.  They  have 
rebuked  and  trodden  down  the  arrogant  pretensions  of  the 
Executive.  They  have  stricken  the  veto  dead  in  his  hands. 
They  have  declared  that  he  shall  not  stand  at  your  doors  to 
arrest  your  legislation,  as  he  has  publicly  threatened  that  he 
would  do.  They  have  degraded  him,  for  the  time  being,  from 
your  associate  in  council,  to  the  mere  minister  of  your  will.  It 
is  their  high  and  irreversible  decree,  that  the  public  servant  who 
presumed  to  deny  their  jurisdiction  and  yours,  over  the  most 
momentous  question  of  your  history,  shall  stand  aside  until  you 
have  disposed  of  it,  and  then  execute  your  judgment  in  good 
faith,  whether  it  be  agreeable  to  him  or  not.  They  have  now 
reviewed  and  reaffirmed  their  decision  of  1864,  and  again 
instructed  you  to  enact  such  laws  as  you  may  think  proper,  and 
to  see  that  they  are  honestly  enforced,  or  that  the  impediment  is 
removed.  Pass  this  bill,  as  the  first  in  the  order  of  necessity, 
and  the  residue  of  the  work  will  be  of  easy  accomplishment. 
Reject  it,  and  posterity  will  grieve  that  the  courage  which  had 
conquered  treason  twice  \vas  not  seconded  by  the  spirit  that 
might  have  shorn  its  locks,  and  bound  it  in  everlasting  chains. 


646  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"We  make  history  to-day.  The  classic  Muse  who  looks 
down  from  her  pedestal  on  this  Chamber,,  stands  ready, 
with  uplifted  style,  to  write  the  chapter  that  is  to  record  the 
doings  of  this  session.  It  behooves  us  to  see  that  the  judgment 
of  a  nation  is  not  made  void  by  the  faint-heartedness  of  its 
Representatives.  There  is  no  time  now  for  dalliance  with  the 
power  that  we  have  conquered.  No  gentle  speech,  'no  candy 
courtesies,'  no  dull  oblivion  of  the  pregnant  past,  befits  the  crisis 
that  is  on  us  now.  We  have  just  trodden  the  winepress  of  Revo 
lution,  to  encounter  at  its  closing  doors  the  bloodier  form  of 
Anarchy,  while  the  untamed  fiends  of  the  rebellion,  their  appe 
tites  inflamed  and  their  hands  dripping  with  the  blood  of  the 
martyrs,  laughed — as  none  but  the  damned  could  laugh — at  the 
rising  vision,  but  dimly  foreshadowed  by  the  St.  Bartholomews 
of  Memphis  and  New  Orleans,  of  the  opening  of  another  seal, 
which  should  turn  our  rivers  into  blood,  and  visit  upon  us  and 
our  children  more  than  apocalyptic  woes. 

"Over  that  precipice  of  ruin  this  nation  has  hung  trembling 
for  the  last  few  months.  The  virtue  and  intelligence  of  a  free 
people,  inspired  and  directed  by  the  providence  of  God,  have 
bridged  the  fathomless  abyss  that  yawned  before  us,  and  saved 
us  from  the  horrors  of  this  second  death.  We  can  now  look  back 
and  measure  the  danger,  and  detect  its  source.  We  know  its 
cause.  Executive  usurpation — despotic  will — encouraged  and 
re-enforced  by  the  unlimited  command  of  all  the  offices  of  the 
Republic,  and  all  the  corrupting  influences  which  they  can 
employ,  is  written  in  flaming  characters  upon  every  rock  that  has 
threatened  us  with  shipwreck.  This  giant  power  must  be 
abridged  if  our  peace  is  to  be  maintained,  and  our  liberties  made 
sure.  The  time  is  now  to  put  a  hook  in  the  jaws  of  this  leviathan 
that  has  tempested  the  waters,  and  moor  him  to  his  proper  place 
under  the  Constitution.  If  we  fail,  the  evil  will  go  on  swelling 
in  volume,  and  accumulating  a  resistless  momentum  as  it 
flows,  until  the  one-man  power — become  all  in  all — enthroned 
in  solitary  state,  like  some  volcanic  peak,  shall  tower  aloft, 
uncontrollable  and  supreme,  over  a  nation  of  slaves." 

The  Tenure-of-Office  Act  was  passed  over  the  veto  of 
the  President,  who  regarded  it  as  unconstitutional,  and 
likewise  the  Reconstruction  Act  became  a  law  on  March 
2,  1867,  thus  operating  a  complete  system  of  reconstruc 
tion  through  the  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Stanton.  While 
this  latter  act  would,  if  the  Southern  white  people  had 
responded  to  it,  have  given  them  a  chance  to  exercise 
their  natural  influence  as  citizens,  it  was  well  known 


"RECONSTRUCTION"  versus  "RESTORATION"        647 

that  they  would  not,  and  it  did  practically  operate  to  dis 
franchise  them.1  These  measures  were  undoubtedly  the 
expression  of  the  will  of  the  majority  of  those  then  vot 
ing  in  the  United  States,  and  that  will  was  due  chiefly  to 
suspicion  of  the  Tennesseean  President's  sympathizers 
and  the  course  of  the  Southern  white  population  under 
Johnson's  "restoration"  policy.  That  it  was  also  due  to 
what  is  now  generally  accepted  as  the  unwise  policy  of 
universal  suffrage  where  there  was  such  a  mass  of  igno 
rance  controlled  by  the  dominant  element,  cannot  be 
doubted ;  at  least  it  cannot  be  by  those  far  enough  away 
from  personal  experience  in  those  trying  times  to  view 
it  historically.  On  the  other  hand,  is  it  not  an  error 
to  suppose  this  great  convulsion  of  '61-65  closed  with 
its  mere  physical  end?  Was  it  possible  that  the 
industrial,  political,  social  and  mental  phases  of  so 
great  a  convulsion  should  not  continue  wrecking  with 
their  great  billows  long  after  the  storm  proper  had 
subsided?  Indeed,  is  not  that  part  of  the  storm  often 
the  worst  in  its  effects — and  naturally  so — because 
the  waves  are  still  dealing  blows  upon  the  exhausted, 
after  a  vision  of  peace  has  appeared?  There  are  always 
pain  and  increased  wreckage  in  the  reconstruction  of  a 
wreck,  and  is  it  not  assuming  on  an  entirely  unhistorical 
scale  to  say  that  the  so-called  "restoration"  policy 
of  even  President  Lincoln — so  far  as  it  could  be 
known  what  it  would  be  when  the  actual  operation  began 
— could  have,  while  securing  the  final  settlement  of  con 
tested  questions  for  which  the  war  was  fought,  been 
operated  with  less  pain  to  all  concerned?  Pain  and  time 
are  both  concomitants  of  the  healing  of  a  wound  or  a 
disease,  and  it  is  not  an  uncommon  experience  in  life  that 
the  pain  and  time  both  should  be  charged  to  the  physician 
and  nurse  who  happened  to  be  called  to  the  unpleasant 
duty.  The  time  will  come,  if  it  is  not  already  here,  when 
this  period  of  reconstruction  will  be  looked  upon  as  the 
most  critical  period  of  this  civil  upheaval,  as  the  years 

1  Congressional  Globe,   Thirty-ninth   Congress,   2d   Session,    Part   i,   p.   22. 

Any  one  who  wishes  to  see  a  legislative  phenomenon,  full  of  startling  sug 
gestion,  has  but  to  see  a  volume  of  the  reports  of  the  State  Executive  or 
minutes  of  a  Legislature  under  these  reconstruction  acts,  e.  g.,  those  of 
Mississippi,  when  the  members  of  the  latter  body  were  almost  entirely  colored. 


648  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

following  1781  have  long  been  considered  in  our  first 
one,  and  when  the  Thirty-ninth  Congress  passed  out  of 
existence  on  March  2,  1867,  there  is  no  manner  of  doubt 
that  it  was  so  considered  by  Mr.  Williams. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 
THE  FORTIETH  CONGRESS 

A  LEADER  OF  THE  JUDICIARY  COMMITTEE,  HE  WRITES 
THE    IMPEACHMENT    REPORT   AGAINST   PRESIDENT 
JOHNSON  AND  MAKES  THE  GREAT  FINAL  ARGU 
MENT  AS  ONE  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  MANAGERS 

1867 

The  Fortieth  Congress  assembled  immediately  on 
Monday  following  the  close  of  the  late  Congress  on  Satur 
day.  Mr.  Williams  drew  the  seat  immediately  back  of 
his  former  one;  Garfield  was  in  the  fourth  seat  to  his 
right;  Elaine  two  seats  farther  west;  Allison  in  front 
of  Garfield ;  General  Logan  was  a  seat  or  so  across  the 
aisle,  and  General  Butler  in  front  of  Allison,  with  Kelley 
at  Butler's  right  and  Stevens  in  front  of  Kelley;  Wilson 
sat  at  Butler's  left  and  Boutwell  was  two  aisles  farther 
west.1  Colfax  was  still  Speaker.  On  the  7th  of  March 
the  judiciary  committee  was  announced.  Chairman 
James  F.  Wilson  of  Iowa,  George  S.  Boutwell  of  Massa 
chusetts,  Francis  Thomas  of  Maryland,  Mr.  Williams, 
Frederick  E.  Woodbridge  of  Vermont,  William  Lawrence 
of  Ohio,  John  C.  Churchill  of  New  York,  Samuel  S.  Mar 
shall  of  Illinois  and  Charles  A.  Eldridge  of  Wisconsin. 
In  the  previous  January  (7th)  an  investigation  of  the 
President  had  been  ordered  and  the  judiciary  committee 
of  the  late  Congress  had  been  unable  to  complete  the 
work.  It  was  now  ordered  to  take  it  up  again  and  con 
tinue  its  investigations  during  a  recess  which  lasted  from 
March  3Oth  to  July  3d  (i867).2  On  July  loth  the  matter 

1  Plan  of  the  House,  facing  p.  9,  in  Congressional  Globe,  Fortieth  Congress, 
ist  Session. 

2  In  a  letter  of  March  9,   1867,   Mr.   Williams  tells  his  wife  of  an  invitation 
to  dine  with   the   President  which   he  "most  respectfully  declined."     He  added 
that  he  "did  not  care  about  sitting  down  at  the  table  of  any  man  for  whom  I 

649 


650  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

came  up  and  Chairman  Wilson  intimated,  in  reporting, 
that  the  committee  were  still  not  ready,  that  they  were 
now  five  to  four  against  the  existence  of  grounds  for 
impeachment,  but  Mr.  Williams  promptly  spoke  for  the 
minority,  stating  that  he  and  his  three  colleagues  on  the 
committee  were  satisfied  to  report  now  in  favor  of  the  exist 
ence  of  grounds  for  impeachment.1  Boutwell  was  of  the 
minority,  too.  It  was  the  course  of  the  President  since  the 
passage  of  the  Tenure-of-Office  Act,  of  which  la\v  Mr. 
Williams  was  the  author,  that  converted  him  to  impeach 
ment.2  He  expected  the  President  to  continue  his  war 
fare,  and  had  already  endeavored  to  make  still  further 
secure  all  the  aims  of  Congress  by  the  introduction,  both 
at  the  last  Congress  and  the  first  session  of  the  present 
one,  of  a  bill  to  require  a  full  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court 
and  a  unanimous  opinion  on  the  constitutionality  of  con 
gressional  measures,  but  as  his  main  defense  of  it  came 
up  later,  it  need  not  be  anticipated.3  He  was  drawn  into 
an  expression  of  his  relation  to  investigation  and 
impeachment,  however,  on  July  2oth(i86/),  in  a  parliamen 
tary  skirmish  between  the  majority  and  minority  of  the 
judiciary  committee,  under  the  form  of  "personal  expla 
nation."  He  said,  "the  place  which  has  been  assigned  me  in 
this  investigation  was  not  one  of  my  seeking.  The  duty 
which  it  involved  has  been  to  me  a  very  painful  one — it 
has  been  a  very  laborious  one.  *  *  *  I  have  had  no 
end  in  view  but  to  serve  my  country,  in  a  case  where  I 
thought  its  highest  and  dearest  interests,  its  safety,  and 
its  life  were  involved."  He  said  a  gentleman  had  stated 
"that  it  was  a  mere  question  of  President-making."4 
"Allow  me  to  say  in  reply/''  Mr.  Williams  continued,  "that 
mv  humble  ambition  has  never  tended  in  the  direction  of 


have  no  personal  respect — who  has  betrayed  the  friends  that  have  been  so 
confiding  &  generous  &  taken  to  his  bosom  the  worst  &  vilest  of  our  country's 
enemies." 

1  Congressional   Globe,    Fortieth    Congress,    ist    Session,    pp.    566-7. 

2  Dewitt,    in    his    "Impeachment   and   Trial   of   Andrew   Johnson"    Cp.    182), 
treats  Williams  as  the  representative  voice  for  the  Tenure  of  Office  Bill,  and 
(P-   195)  notes  that  he,  Schenck  and  Wilson  were  the  committee  to  confer  on  it 
with  a  similar  Senate  committee,  composed  of  Senators  Williams  (of  Oregon), 
Sherman  and  Buckalew. 

8  Congressional    Globe,    Fortieth    Congress,    ist    Session,    p.    59. 

4  He  referred  to  the  desire  of  some  who,  by  impeaching  President  John 
son,  would  put  Senator  Wade  of  Ohio,  presiding  officer  of  the  Senate,  in  the 
White  House  and  make  him  the  logical  candidate  for  the  next  term. 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  651 

either  making  presidents  or  kings,"  and  after  intimating 
that  there  was  no  honor  in  making  either,  he  added 
"when  I  find  a  President  of  these  United  States  asserting 
kingly  powers,  claiming  the  force  of  statutes  for  his  proc 
lamations,  living  in  habitual  contempt  and  violation  of 
your  laws,  suspending  their  powers  or  trampling  them 
under  foot,  bartering  away  untold  millions  of  your  prop 
erty  for  rebel  use,  claiming  to  rule  without  a  Congress, 
insulting  the  legislative  power  and  defying  its  authority, 
and  ruling  this  nation  as  if  he  were  its  master,  so  help  me 
God  I  will  uncrown  him  if  I  can." 

The  investigation  was  continued,  and  while  it  was  still 
in  progress — although  Congress  itself  had  adjourned  July 
2oth  to  November  2ist — on  August  5th  (1867),  the  Pres 
ident  suggested  the  resignation  of  Secretary  Stanton,  and 
vStanton  refused,  at  least  before  the  next  meeting  of  Con 
gress.  On  the  I2th  he  was  suspended  by  the  President 
and  General  Grant  placed  in  charge  temporarily.  This 
was  known,  of  course,  on  November  25th,  when  Mr. 
Boutwell  presented  the  judiciary  committee's  majority 
report,  recommending  impeachment,  adding  "that  all  that 
part  of  the  report  which  relates  to  the  testimony  taken, 
and  to  the  consideration  of  the  law  involved  in  the  case, 
was  prepared  by  the  gentleman  from  Pennsylvania  [Mr. 
Williams],  a  member  of  the  Committee.  It  has  fallen  to 
my  lot  to  present  the  report  to  the  House,  for  the  reason 
that  it  was  the  pleasure  of  the  Speaker  to  place  me  second 
upon  the  Committee  on  the  Judiciary;  and  the  Chairman 
of  the  Committee  [Mr.  Wilson  of  Iowa],  dissenting  from 
the  report  of  the  majority,  it  was,  by  general  consent  of 
the  members  forming  the  majority,  agreed  that  I  should 
present  the  report  to  the  House."1  It  was  ordered  printed. 
The  majority  which  signed  it  were  Boutwell,  Thomas, 
Williams,  Lawrence  and  Churchill.  It  covered  over  fifty- 
eight  pages  of  printed  matter,  all  of  which  was  the  work 
of  Mr.  Williams  except  less  than  four  pages  of  summary 
by  Mr.  Boutwell.2 

To  quote  only  one  paragraph  from  this  report:  "It 
will  be  observed,  then,"  he  adds,  after  his  introduction, 

1  Congressional  Globe,   Fortieth    Congress,    ist   Session,    p.    791. 
*  See   Boutwell's   "Reminiscences,"   Vol.    II,   p.    113. 


652  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

''that  the  great  salient  point  of  accusation,  standing  out  in 
the  foreground,  and  challenging  the  attention  of  the 
country,  is  usurpation  of  power,  which  involves,  of  course, 
a  violation  of  law.  And  here  it  may  be  remarked  that  per 
haps  every  great  abuse,  every  flagrant  departure  from  the 
well-settled  principles  of  the  government,  which  has  been 
brought  home  to  its  present  administration,  whether  dis 
covering  itself  in  special  infractions  of  its  statutes,  or  in 
the  profligate  use  of  the  high  powers  conferred  by  the 
Constitution  on  the  President,  or  revealing  itself  more 
manifestly  in  the  systematic  attempt  to  seize  upon  its 
sovereignty,  and  disparage  and  supersede  the  great 
council  to  which  that  sovereignty  has  been  intrusted,  is 
referable  to  the  one  great  overshadowing  purpose  of 
reconstructing  the  shattered  governments  of  the  rebel 
States  in  accordance  with  his  own  will,  in  the  interests 
of  the  great  criminals  who  carried  them  into  rebellion, 
and  in  such  a  way  as  to  deprive  the  people  of  the  loyal 
States  of  all  chances  of  indemnity  for  the  past  or  security 
for  the  future,  by  pardoning  their  offenses,  restoring  their 
lands,  and  hurrying  them  back — their  hearts  unrepentant, 
and  their  hands  yet  red  with  the  blood  of  our  people — into 
a  condition  where  they  could  once  more  embarrass  and 
defy,  if  not  absolutely  rule  the  government  which 
they  had  vainly  endeavored  to  destroy.  It  is  around  this 
point,  and  as  auxiliary  to  this  great  central  idea,  that  all 
the  special  acts  of  mal-administration  we  have  wit 
nessed,  will  be  found  to  gravitate  and  revolve,  and  it  is 
to  this  point,  therefore,  as  the  great  master-key  which 
unlocks  and  interprets  all  of  them,  that  the  attention  of 
the  House  will  be  first  directed.'' 

The  report  states  that  from  Mr.  Lincoln's  well-known 
and  "habitual  deference  to  the  public  will,"  there  was  no 
doubt,  even  he,  who  was  from  a  loyal  State,  would  have 
lain  down  his  sword  before  the  Congress  after  the  sur 
render,  and  let  Law  resume  her  sway ;  that  it  would  be 
an  easA-  task  to  show  that  congressional  action  would  have 
been  and  had  already  been  of  a  moderation,  forbearance, 
and  magnanimity  "that  has  no  example  in  history;"  but 
at  any  rate  the  committee  were  of  one  voice  in  that  the 
task  left  by  the  war  was  no  business  of  the  Executive. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         653 

"Never,"  reads  one  sentence,  "in  the  history  of  this  or  any 
other  State  have  questions  more  numerous  and  vital, 
more  delicate  or  difficult,  requiring  graver  deliberation,  or 
involving  the  exercise  of  higher  governmental  powers, 
presented  themselves  for  the  consideration  of  a  people ; 
and  never  was  a  Congress  convoked  in  a  more  serious 
crisis  of  a  State."  Nothing  further  of  the  report  need  be 
anticipated,  as  the  parts  emphasized  by  Mr.  Williams 
when  the  impeachment,  which  was  finally  recommended, 
came  to  trial  will  be  seen  in  full. 

On  December  7th  (1867),  by  a  test  vote  for  impeach 
ment,  the  recommendation  was  rejected  by  108  to  57,  but 
events  soon  modified  this.  The  Senate,  in  executive  ses 
sion,  on  January  13,  1868,  carrying  out  the  spirit  of  the 
Tenure-of-Office  Act,  refused  to  consent  to  Mr.  Stanton's 
removal.1  On  the  same  day  Mr.  Williams  brought  for 
ward  his  previous  bill,  in  the  form  of  an  amendment  to 
the  Senate  bill,  providing  for  a  full  bench  of  the  Supreme 
Court  and  unanimity  of  decision  on  great  constitutional 
measures  of  Congress,  and  he  made  a  short  defense  of  it 
of  such  significance — especially  in  its  closing  paragraphs, 
that  it  is  quoted  entire  as  giving  his  vital  relations  to  this 
whole  contest  with  the  President,  in  what  may  be  called 
the  ''Second  Civil  Wrar  of  the  Sixties."  Nowhere  else 
does  he  describe  his  attitude  to  public  questions  more 
accurately  than  in  this  short  address:2 

The  object  of  the  amendment  reported  by  the  committee  to 
the  Senate  bill  is  to  preserve  this  Government  in  its  original 
spirit,  and  protect  its  people  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights 
intended  to  be  secured  to  them  by  its  fundamental  law,  by  pro 
tecting  that  law  as  well  against  the  encroachments  of  the  States 
as  from  the  ambition  or  infirmities  of  its  accredited  expounders, 
acting  through  the  more  insidious  and  alarming  process  of 
judicial  construction,  which  is  so  often  but  another  name  for 
judicial  legislation. 

The  purpose  of  the  amendment  just  offered  by  me,  which  is 


1  McPherson's    "Political    Manual    of    Reconstruction,"    p.    262    (1875).       A 
collection  of  miscellany,  a  squib  apparently  taken  from  the  National  Intelligencer. 
It  is  not  in  the  Globe,  of  course. 

2  Congressional  Globe,   zd   Session,    Fortieth   Congress,   p.   479,  and  appendix, 
p.    85.      Mr.    Marshall   referred   to    Mr.    Williams   as   "The   distinguished   gentle 
man   from    Pennsylvania,    a   member   of  the   Judiciary   Committee,     the     gentle 
man  who  first  brought  this  question  before  the  country." 


654  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

no  other  than  a  copy  of  the  bill  that,  under  a  feeling  of  profound 
alarm  for  the  tranquility  of  the  nation  and  the  preservation  of 
the  just  balances  of  the  Constitution,  was  introduced  by  me 
into  the  last  Congress,  and  again  renewed  and  referred  upon 
the  inauguration  of  the  present  one,  is  to  make  that  protection 
sure  by  exacting  the  highest  security  that  the  authority  of  Con 
gress  can  demand  and  the  nature  of  the  circumstances  will 
admit. 

To  this  end  it  provides  that  not  less  than  a  full  bench  shall 
sit  in  judgment  upon  the  will  of  the  people  as  declared  through 
their  Representatives,  and  that  nothing  short  of  the  consentane 
ous  agreement  of  the  favored  few,  holding  their  places  by 
appointment  of  the  Executive,  shall  nullify  that  will,  by  break 
ing  the  scepter  of  the  law-giver,  and  striking  his  ordinances 
dead  at  his  feet. 

The  amendment  of  the  committee,  while  it  accepts  and 
incorporates  the  principle  enunciated  in  my  bill,  and  so  far 
challenges  my  approval,  reduces  the  security  provided  for  it  by 
compromising  on  a  two-third  vote,  which,  under  the  present 
constitution  of  the  Supreme  Court,  would  add  one  voice  only 
to  the  number  now  required  to  undo  the  work  of  Congress,  and 
give,  perhaps,  a  new  law  to  the  people ;  and  in  this,  I  think,  falls 
short  of  the  necessities  of  the  case  and  the  high  requirements  of 
public  duty. 

The  difference,  then,,  is  only  one  of  measure  or  degree — a 
mere  question  of  more  or  less — between  the  highest  possible 
security  and  an  inferior  or  lower  one.  And  here,  I  think,  it 
may  be  affirmed  with  confidence  that  the  legislator,  holding,  as 
he  does,  a  public  trust,  and  not  dealing  upon  his  own  account  or 
for  his  own  private  interests  alone,  has  no  absolute  discretion, 
no  choice,  indeed,  but  to  take  the  higher  and  superior.  Assuming 
the  need  of  a  guarantee  for  the  public  safety,  he  cannot,  in  my 
judgment,  demand  too  much;  his  only  question  is  what  is  within 
the  range  of  the  possible.  When  the  great  interests — perhaps 
the  life — of  a  nation  are  involved,  I  take  it  to  be  his  clear  duty 
to  waive  no  security,  but  to 

"Make  assurance  doubly  sure, 
And  take  a  bond  of  fate." 

The  point  once  admitted,  as  it  is  here,  that  we  may  require 
any  more  than  a  majority,  the  whole  question  is  surrendered. 
If  we  may  exact  two  thirds  it  is  transparent  that  we  may  exact 
the  whole.  And  who  shall  say,  if  we  may  do  this,  that  the  lowest 
security  which  the  country  shall  enjoy  shall  be  less  than  the 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  655 

unanimity  of  the  jury  box?  If  that  is  practicable,  why  not  insist 
upon  it. 

To  these  questions  there  can  be  no  answer  except  that  it 
is  unreasonable,  or  inexpedient  and  unnecessary.  But  is  this  so  ? 
Let  us  examine. 

It  is  not  certainly  unreasonable  to  insist  that  if  the  judg 
ments  of  perhaps  two  hundred  representative  men,  of  the  elite 
of  the  nation,  drawn  mainly  from  the  legal  profession,  and 
embodying  a  large  portion  of  its  wisdom  and  experience,  are  to 
be  overruled  by  a  little  conclave  of  some  seven  or  eight  not 
chosen  by  the  people  at  all,  and  no  wiser  or  better  than  them 
selves,  the  oracle  whose  nod  is  claimed  to  be  equal  to  the  stamp 
of  fate  shall  give  out  no  discordant  utterances.  The  wisdom 
of  that  common  law  which  was  claimed  by  our  ancestors  as  their 
birth-right  has  ordained  that  the  life,  and  liberty,  and  property, 
even  of  the  humblest  citizen,  shall  not  be  taken  away  without 
the  unanimous  verdict  of  a  jury  of  his  peers.  Who  shall  say 
that  the  life  of  a  great  State,  the  liberties  of  a  great  people,  are 
not  entitled  to  the  same  protection,  and  that  four  or  five  men  out 
of  a  body  so  constituted — nay,  even  a  bare  majority  of  those 
four  or  five — shall  determine  in  the  last  resort,  and  without  any 
appeal  whatever,  the  extent  of  its  own  charter  of  freedom,,  in 
defiance  of  the  sense  of  the  millions  who,  under  all  the  forms  of 
the  Constitution,  have  declared  their  sovereign  will  ? 

I  did  not  regard  it  as  unlikely  that  the  proposition,  which 
I  had  the  honor  to  introduce  nearly  a  year  ago,  would  startle  the 
profession  at  first  sight  as  an  alarming  innovation,  and  I  am  not 
sure  that  this  expectation  has  been  entirely  disappointed.  It 
could  scarcely  in  the  nature  of  things  be  otherwise.  Lawyers, 
who  run  in  grooves,  and  are  educated  into  a  superstitious  rever 
ence  for  precedents,  and  so  often — I  may  say  so  proverbially — 
fail  as  statesmen,  because  they  lack  the  bold,  original,  and  pro 
gressive  spirit  of  a  Mansfield,  are  alway  averse  to  untried  ways, 
and  always  ready  to  denounce  the  idea  of  reform  or  change, 
whenever  it  goes  to  matter  of  substance  and  beyond  any  mere 
question  of  form,  as  a  pernicious  novelty.  Men  of  this  sort 
will  say,  perhaps,  that  there  is  no  case  where  unanimity  of 
sentiment  has  ever  been  demanded  at  the  hands  of  any  tribunal 
on  a  question  as  to  the  meaning  or  effect  of  a  covenant  or  a 
law,  and  taking  their  position  there,  maintain  that  the  thing  is 
improper  only  because  there  is  no  precedent  to  warrant  it. 

And  yet  if  the  law,  as  claimed  by  its  professors,  is  only 
reason  and  the  very  perfection  of  it,  and  if  what  is  not  reason  is 
not  law,  it  will  be  found,  on  the  application  of  this  test,  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  requirement  of  unanimity  to  conflict  with 


656  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

that  idea.  Whatever  weight  considerations  of  mere  convenience 
may  be  entitled  to  in  ordinary  cases  upon  questions  of  merely 
private  right  between  man  and  man,  it  cannot  certainly  be 
affirmed  that  there  is  anything  unreasonable  in  the  proposition 
that  unanimity  of  opinion  shall  be  required  where  the  tribunal 
is  a  small  one,  and  it  is  sought  to  overthrow  the  judgment  of  the 
millions,  speaking  through  another  and  greater  organ,  on  a 
matter  that  concerns  the  well-being  of  the  whole,  and  perhaps 
the  very  existence  of  the  State.  The  lawyer  who  cherishes 
the  old  and  favorite  hypothesis,  that  what  we  every  day  realize 
to  be  the  most  uncertain  of  all  things  is  always  absolutely  cer 
tain,  cannot  very  consistently  complain  that  the  meagre  priest 
hood,  which  ministers  at  the  shrine  of  an  oracle  that  claims  to 
be  infallible,  should  be  expected  to  give  out  no  divided  responses, 
and  scatter  no  ambiguous  voices  among  the  worshippers,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  on  all  vital  questions  at  least,  should  blend  all 
its  outgivings  into  one  sublime  chorus  of  universal  harmony.  In 
matters  of  faith,  where  the  idea  of  infallibility  is  the  rule,  such 
consentaneity  is  indispensable.  If  the  successors  of  the  fisher 
man,  along  with  the  triple  crown  had  worn  a  triple  head,  the 
prestige  of  infallibility  must  soon  have  disappeared.  With  seven 
or  eight  heads  the  faith  must  necessarily  have  perished  under 
any  other  other  rule  than  that  which  is  proposed  to  be  enacted 
here. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  remind  the  lawyer  himself  that  there 
is  an  analogy  to  this  in  that  time-honored  institution,  the  trial 
by  jury,  which,  although  generally  referred  to  the  great  charter 
of  English  liberty,  antedates  the  records  of  our  race,  and  is 
imbedded  in  all  our  constitutions  as  the  palladium  of  all  our 
rights — the  one  great  pre-eminent  defense  of  private  and  public 
liberty.  It  was  not  enough  that  the  person  and  property  of  the 
citizen  should  be  walled  round  by  the  protection  of  his  peers. 
Even  that  security  was  treated  as  inadequate  without  the  una 
nimity  that  constitutes  its  excellence.  It  was  still  possible  that 
seven  men  out  of  twelve  might  be  warped  by  prejudice,  misled 
by  ignorance,  imposed  on  by  cunning,  corrupted  by  money,  or 
seduced  or  overawed  by  power.  The  life  and  liberty  and  prop 
erty  of  the  citizen  were  not  to  be  trusted  to  the  keeping  of  the 
majority,  or  taken  away  except  by  the  unanimous  accord  of  all 
his  judges, passing  in  criminal  cases  as  well  upon  the  law  as  upon 
the  facts.  It  is  the  glory  of  England,  as  it  is  the  boast  of 
America,  that  not  one  of  the  great  natural  rights,  whose  protec 
tion  is  the  only  legitimate  object  of  all  government,  shall  be  dis 
turbed,  even  in  the  smallest  particular,  without  the  unanimous 
judgment  of  a  larger  bench  than  that  which  claims  to  pass,  by  a 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         657 

divided  vote,  upon  the  fundamental  law  of  a  great  nation,  and  in 
effect  to  nullify  that  law,  or  to  make  it  speak  in  accordance  with 
its  own  imperial  behests.  Who,  then,  shall  say  that  there  is  in 
this  amendment  anything  unreasonable  or  unprecedented,  or  any 
departure  from  the  analogies  of  our  Constitution;  or  that  a 
nation  may  not  borrow  in  its  extremity,  for  the  preservation  of 
its  life,  the  securities  it  has  already  thrown  around  the  humblest 
individual  and  the  lowliest  home  ? 

If  there  is  anything  that  is  transcendently  and  indefensibly 
unreasonable,  it  is  in  the  idea  that  it  should  be  competent  for 
even  any  seven  or  eight  men,  however  exalted,  and  with  like 
passions  and  infirmities  as  ourselves,  either  to  legislate  away 
by  construction  the  great  charter  of  our  liberties,  or  to  set  aside 
the  decrees  of  the  high  council  of  the  nation,  embodying,  as  it 
always  does,  a  large  share  of  the  intelligence  and  all  of  the 
majesty  of  a  great  people,  and  in  effect  to  bind  everybody  but 
itself.  That  is  an  anomaly  necessary,  necessitated,  perhaps,  by 
the  fact  of  a  written  Constitution,  but  still  an  anomaly  that 
may  well  startle  us,  in  view  of  the  possibilities  that  are  so 
strongly  suggested  by  the  present  condition  of  the  nation,  wherein 
its  highest  judicial  tribunal  is  invoked  and  depended  upon, 
as  a  powerful,  nay,  a  resistless  auxiliary  in  the  war  waged  by 
the  Executive  against  the  power  that  is  entrusted  under  the 
Constitution  with  the  making  of  its  laws.  There  was  a  time 
when  it  was  seriously  doubted  whether  there  was  any  authority 
in  the  States  or  the  United  States  that  could  declare  an  act  of 
the  law-making  power  to  be  invalid  because  it  conflicted  with 
the  constitutions  of  either.  That  question  has  been  settled 
affirmatively  on  grounds  that  may  be,  perhaps,  conceded  to  be 
unanswerable,  and  which  I  will  not,  at  all  events,  attempt  to 
controvert.  It  was  apparently  the  logical  and  necessary  result 
of  an  antagonism  between  a  superior  law  and  an  inferior  one, 
which  could  not  be  reconciled  without  the  surrender  of  one  or 
other  of  them.  If  the  fundamental,  and  of  course  the  higher 
law  was  not  to  prevail  in  such  a  strife,  the  Constitution  became 
valueless  as  a  limitation,  which  it  was  intended  to  be.  It  was 
not  without  reason,  however,  as  we  have  occasion  from  very 
recent  experience  to  know,  that  the  jealous  and  watchful  and 
sagacious  Jefferson  referred  again  and  again  to  the  power 
claimed  for  that  tribunal,  as  involving  the  establishment  of  a 
judicial  oligarchy  in  the  land. 

We  look  in  vain  to  the  country  from  which  our  institutions 
are  derived  for  any  example  of  such  a  power  as  this  over  its 
constitution  and  laws.  The  royal  negative,  it  is  true,  may  sus 
pend  the  action  of  the  legislative  body,  although  in  point  of  fact 


658  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

that  prerogative  has  slept  for  nearly  two  hundred  years,  but  it 
settles  nothing  in  regard  to  the  powers  of  that  arm  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  and  only  stays  its  operation  until  the  might  of  public 
opinion  comes  back  to  bend  even  royalty  itself  before  it.  No 
British  court,  even  the  most  ancient  and  venerable,  with  all  its 
historic  prestige  and  all  its  array  of  learning,  has  ever  ventured 
to  set  limits  to  the  authority  of  the  law-giver.  The  appeal  is 
not  there  from  Parliament  to  the  courts,  but  practically  from  the 
courts  themselves  to  Parliament,  as  the  highest  of  them  all.  And 
well  and  faithfully  has  that  great  depository  of  the  unwritten 
laws  and  customs  of  England,  which  constitute  the  safeguard  of 
the  liberties  of  its  people,  observed  and  performed  that  responsi 
ble  and  exalted  trust.  In  the  custody  of  the  courts  they  would 
have  sickened  and  died  under  the  withering  influence  of  royal 
favor.  The  history  of  that  nation  proves  abundantly  that  in  all 
the  struggles  between  prerogative  and  privilege  the  supplest 
instruments  of  tyranny  have  been  the  judges.  But  to  the  honor 
of  the  Legislature  be  it  said,  that  no  decision  has  ever  been 
made  by  them  which  violated  the  instincts  of  the  Saxon  race, 
by  breaking  down  its  landmarks,  or  traversing  its  great  maxims 
of  liberty,  by  impinging  upon  the  natural  rights  of  the  subject, 
that  has  not  been  eventually  reversed  by  the  Commons  of  Eng 
land  in  Parliament  assembled.  And  thus,  without  a  written 
constitution,  with  no  guides  but  those  high  instincts,  those  hoary 
and  venerable  customs,  and  those  hallowed  traditions  of  the 
past,  which,  handed  down,  as  they  have  been,  from  sire  to  son 
from  prehistoric  times,  make  up  the  body  of  their  common  or 
customary  law,  the  liberties  of  Englishmen,  so  wisely  reserved 
for  their  own  keeping,  have  been  perpetuated  from  generation 
to  generation,  not  only  unimpaired,  but  enlarged,  improved, 
developed,  and  strengthened  by  the  flow  of  centuries.  They  have 
not  learned  the  royal  lesson  of  the  last  presidential  campaign, 
which  is  still  rehearsed  and  reiterated  even  here,  that  the  danger 
of  tyranny  is  from  the  many,  or,  in  other  words,  from  them 
selves,  and  that  they  required  the  vetoes  of  a  king,  or  the  super 
visory  power  of  a  court,  to  instruct  them  as  to  their  rights,  and 
protect  them  from  themselves.  There  have  been  none  among  their 
representatives  so  deficient  in  self-respect  as  to  abase  themselves 
in  the  presence  of  any  court ;  none  so  unappreciative  of  their 
own  high  trusts,  or  so  forgetful  of  their  official  dignity,  as  to 
insist,  or  even  to  concede,  that  there  was  more  wisdom  and 
learning,  and  virtue  concentrated  in  any  body  of  seven,  or  eight, 
or  even  twelve  men  in  Westminster  Hall,  selected  by  the  Crown, 
than  was  to  be  found  in  the  multitude  of  counselors  that  repre 
sent  the  people  of  a  great  empire.  The  Parliament  of  England 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         659 

is  the  guardian  of  the  liberties  of  England,  and  cannot  betray 
those  liberties  without  surrendering  its  own.  And  so,  too,  with 
our  Constitution  and  all  of  value  that  it  contains.  When  it 
ceases  to  be  safe  in  the  hands  of  all  the  people,  who  have  a 
common  inheritance  in  its  provisions,  it  is  idle  to  hope  that  it  can 
be  locked  up  securely  under  the  custody  of  any  seven  or  eight 
men  outside,  as  so  many  doctors  of  the  Sanhedrim,  with  the 
high  prerogative  of  reading  and  interpreting  it  to  the  people,  as 
the  imperfect  judgment  or  the  mere  caprice  of  a  majority  of 
them  may  determine.  The  statesman  who  holds  that  we  cannot 
safely  trust  ourselves,  and  that  our  only  security  is  in  such  a 
guardianship,  surrenders  the  idea  of  self-government  as  a  vision 
ary  and  impracticable  thing,  and  confesses  that  a  political  State 
cannot  exist  without  a  master.  That  is  an  ancient  superstition. 
Wise  men  of  old  and  some  of  modern  times  have  entertained 
it.  The  world  has  generally  been  governed  under  it,  often  by  a 
hierarchy.  It  was  supposed  for  a  long  time  to  have  been 
exploded  here.  It  is  now  revived  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Democratic  party — once  so  hostile  to  this  regime — in  the  idea 
that  a  sort  of  hieratic  college — a  priesthood  of  a  new  religion — 
a  little  oligarchy  of  lawyers — is  the  only  safe  depository  of  the 
supreme  power  of  the  State.  The  difference  is  only  between  an 
octarchy  and  a  monarchy — between  eight  sacerdotal  masters — a 
sort  of  conclave  of  superannuated  cardinals — in  wigs  and  gowns, 
and  a  single  royal  one  in  purple.  Without  disparagement  to 
either  of  these  high  professions,  and  certainly  with  none  to 
that  to  which  nearly  forty  years  of  my  own  life  have  been 
devoted,  and  which  is  now  sought  by  some  to  be  enthroned  at 
this  Capitol  as  the  absolute  master  of  the  State,  I  must  be 
excused  for  thinking  that,  however  flattering  may  be  the  offer 
of  the  crown  to  us,  many  people  would,  perhaps,  prefer  the  pur 
ple,  writh  all  its  attendant  splendors,  to  the  sable  regalia  of  either 
the  priest  or  the  pedagogue. 

If  it  has  been  found,  however,  that  the  liberties  of  English 
men  could  not  be  safely  trusted  to  their  courts,  how  much  less 
likely  is  it  that  ours,  as  a  people,  can  be  confided  securely  to 
the  same  hands  here.  It  may  be  truly  said  of  the  judiciary  of  the 
mother-land,  that  since  the  era  of  the  great  Revolution,  for  a 
period  now  of  near  two  hundred  years,  there  have  been  no 
tribunals  among  men  that  have  been  more  exempt  from  the 
frailties  of  humanity,  and  have  more  nearly  approximated  to  the 
ideal  of  unerring  wisdom  and  perfect  justice;  and  it  is  to  the 
fact  that  the  highest  honors  of  the  profession  are  only  accessi 
ble  to  the  highest  excellence,  that  there  are  no  loftier  rewards 
to  tempt  ambition,  even  the  most  restless  and  insatiable,  and  that 


66O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

there  is  a  homogeneity  among  its  people  which  frees  it  from 
the  adulteration  of  foreign  and  inferior  ethnic  elements,  that  it 
is  indebted  for  these  exalted  qualities.  No  favoritism  rules  in 
the  selection  of  its  judges.  The  leader  in  the  forum  steps  by  an 
admitted  right  of  succession  into  the  first  vacancy  on  the  bench. 
It  is  scarcely  within  the  power  of  the  Crown  itself  to  disregard 
this  rule  in  its  appointments.  To  pass  by  the  trained  athletes, 
and  single  out  even  the  greatest  of  the  parliamentary  leaders 
for  such  a  place,  would  shock  the  moral  sense  of  the  whole 
realm.  Not  so,  unfortunately,  with  us. 

There  is,  perhaps,  scarce  a  Congressman  or  Cabinet  officer, 
who  has  been  long  enough  in  public  life  to  unlearn  all  of  law 
that  he  ever  knew,  whose  modesty  would  prevent  him  from 
seeking  or  accepting  the  mantle  that  has  fallen  from  the 
shoulders  of  a  Marshall  or  a  Story.  It  is  not  to  the  leaders  of 
the  bar  in  this  country  that  the  honors  of  the  profession  are 
awarded,  as  their  undisputed  right;  and  they  are,  perhaps,  not 
sought  by  them,  for  the  reason  that  the  rewards  are  not  com 
mensurate  with  the  earnings  of  the  higher  class  of  professional 
men.  And  therefore  it  is  that  the  bar  is  in  most  cases  superior 
to  the  bench,  as  it  cannot  be  where  the  usage  prevails  of  select 
ing  the  judges  from  the  ablest  of  its  members;  and  therefore  it 
is,  too,  that  the  spectacle  of  a  divided  court  is,  of  late  years 
especially,  so  common  a  thing,  that  unanimity  is  the  exception 
rather  than  the  rule,  and  lawyers  themselves  are  startled  at  the 
idea  of  prescribing  a  condition  that  to  them  seems  impossible.  I 
take  leave  to  say  that  it  is  no  more  impossible  than  the  harmoni 
ous  agreement  of  a  jury.  It  is  questions  of  fact  alone  that  are 
the  most  fruitful  sources  of  difference  among  men.  In  matters 
of  pure  science,  as  the  law  is  sometimes  claimed  to  be,  there  is 
no  great  room  for  controversy.  High  culture  and  thorough 
discipline  will  go  far  to  secure  accordance  in  opinion.  The 
best  lawyers  will  be  seldom  found  to  differ  where  they  are 
agreed  upon  the  facts.  It  is  only  the  pretenders,  the  mere 
sciolists,  that  convert  what  ought  to  be  the  temple  of  concord 
into  an  arena  of  perpetual  strife,  on  the  bench  as  well  as  at 
the  bar.  In  the  long  term  of  thirty-two  years,  during  which 
Lord  Mansfield  presided  over  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  there 
wTere,  if  my  recollection  serves  me  right,  but  two  cases  of  divi 
sion  among  the  judges  of  that  court — one  the  case  of  Millar  vs. 
Taylor,  upon  the  great  question  of  literary  property,  and  the 
other  that  of  Perrin  vs.  Blake,  upon  the  application  of  the  rule 
in  Shelley's  case — and  no  reversals  in  the  Exchequer  Chamber  or 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  except  in  those  two  cases,  wherein  the 
dissenting  judge  was  Yates,  who  was  decided  to  be  right  in 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         66l 

both.  Another  Yates  might  save  the  Constitution  here  against 
even  the  errors  of  another  Mansfield  by  the  adoption  of  the 
proposed  amendment.  And  what  is  there,  in  view  of  this  strik 
ing  chapter  of  judicial  history,  which  is  only  singled  out  by 
way  of  illustration  of  the  general  harmony  that  prevails  in 
England,  to  prevent  the  achievement  of  the  same  result  with  us ; 
and  who  is  there  that  will  consent,  until  it  is  accomplished,  to 
trust  the  welfare  and  the  very  existence  of  this  nation  to  such 
an  arbitrament. 

But  it  is  not  the  want  of  professional  training  only  that 
makes  the  difficulty  and  the  danger  here.  The  judge,  with  us, 
is  not  so  much  a  lawyer  as  a  politician.  The  chances  are  that 
his  politics  and  not  his  knowledge  of  the  law,  have  made  him 
what  he  is;  and  the  place  he  has  sought  and  won  is,  perhaps, 
but  the  stepping-stone  to  a  higher  one — which  he  covets  more — 
whenever  he  shall  have  recommended  himself  sufficiently  by  his 
conduct  there,  either  to  the  President  or  to  the  party  to  which 
he  owes  his  exaltation.  Without  any  of  the  esprit  du  corps,  the 
devotion  to  his  proper  calling,  the  high  professional  pride  that 
always  results  from  high  professional  training,  he  sinks  the 
lawyer  in  the  politician,  and  carries  into  the  temple  of  Themis, 
where  no  divided  worship  is  admissible,,  all  the  prejudice  of 
party,  and  all  the  spirit  of  the  local  and  sectional  demagogue. 
It  is  idle  to  talk  of  our  courts  of  justice  as  merely  judicial 
institutions.  Disclaiming  ostensibly  all  jurisdiction  over  political 
questions,  they  are  as  thoroughly  political  in  their  texture  and 
spirit  as  the  two  Houses  of  Congress  themselves.,  over  whose 
atmosphere  of  mists  and  storms  they  are  supposed  to  float,  like 
disembodied  spirits,  in  the  celestial  light  of  an  unclouded  and 
unbiased  reason.  Turn  to  the  history  of  our  jurisprudence. 
State  and  national,  and  what  do  you  see  but  the  reflection  of  the 
opinions  of  the  party  which  happens  for  the  time  being  to  have 
the  ascendant  in  the  courts?  Fortunately,  perhaps,  for  the 
welfare  of  this  nation,  before  it  was  well  hardened  into  the 
consistency  of  an  organized  State,  the  plastic  hand  of  the  party 
that  favored  the  covenant  of  Union  was  invoked  to  put  its 
impress  on  the  work  and  launch  it  on  its  high  career.  If  the 
old  Federalist,  however,  carried  to  the  bench  one  set  of  opinions, 
the  old  Republican  brought  with  him  another.  With  the  growth 
of  slavery  the  State  rights  Democrat,  drawing  his  inspiration 
mainly  from  that  unhallowed  institution,  took  possession  of  the 
State  and  Federal  courts,  stealing  away,  even  in  the  free  Com 
monwealth  of  Pennsylvania,  the  chartered  rights  of  the  black 
man,  under  the  miserable  juggle  that  the  word  "freeman"  did 
not  mean  a  free  man,  but  a  white  man,  and  maintaining  its 


662  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

power  here  and  in  the  States  until  that  power  culminated  and 
carried  the  country  down  into  rebellion  and  ruin,  in  the  mon 
strous  paradox  that  slavery  and  not  freedom  was  the  law  of 
this  Republic,  and  that  four  millions  of  its  native  inhabitants 
were  but  aliens  and  outlaws,  with  no  rights  that  a  white  man 
was  bound  to  respect. 

When  the  echo  of  these  opinions  came  back  in  the  roll  of 
the  war  drum,  and  the  thunders  of  the  artillery  that  shook  this 
Capitol,  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  startled,  as  it 
no  doubt  was,  by  the  unexpected  results  of  its  own  work,  with 
one  defection  only,  maintained  its  faith  to  the  Union  by 
adhering  to  the  Government,  affirming  its  powers  of  self-con 
servation;  and  recognizing  the  belligerent  relations  created  by 
the  war.  It  could  not  well  have  been  otherwise.  Its  dignity,  its 
power,  its  very  existence,  were  involved  in  the  preservation  of 
that  Union  whose  integrity  was  menaced  by  the  revolt.  Not  so, 
however,  with  the  party  judges  of  the  States.  While  it  was  no 
longer  sate  to  question  the  power  to  coerce,  wherever  a  Demo 
cratic  judge  was  found,  he  was  almost  sure  to  cast  his  vote 
into  the  southern  scale  by  a  denial  of  the  means,  while  the 
Republican  judges  of  the  loyal  States  were  ever  ready  to  enforce 
the  legislation  of  the  governments,  both  Federal  and  State,  in 
aid  of  the  war.  Thus  in  Pennsylvania,  when  it  was  proposed  to 
arm  the  soldier  with  suffrage  in  the  field,  in  order  to  enable  him 
to  protect  himself  from  "a  fire  in  the  rear,"  the  constitution 
ality  of  the  law  enacted  for  that  purpose  was  denied  by  a  Demo 
cratic  court.  If  the  right  of  the  General  Government  to  com 
pel  the  military  service  of  its  citizens  in  its  darkest  hour  was 
sustained  even  upon  the  anomalous  and  extraordinary  proceeding 
of  a  bill  in  equity  to  enjoin  the  draft,  hurried  to  an  argument 
against  all  rule  before  a  full  bench,  in  midsummer  and  out  of 
term,  while  the  rebel  armies  were  thundering  at  our  very  gates, 
and  pressing  in  serried  columns  upon  the  fatal  field  of  Gettys 
burg,  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  same  State,  it  was  only 
through  a  popular  election  which  deposed  one  Democratic  judge, 
and  the  defection  of  another,  who  preferred  his  country  to  his 
party.  If  the  legal-tender  act,  which  provided  in  the  nation's 
extremity  the  sinews  of  war,  and  fed  and  clothed  the  gallant 
volunteers  who  so  freely  offered  their  young  lives  to  the  sacred 
cause  of  liberty,  was  saved  from  judicial  condemnation  in  the 
same  court,  it  was  in  the  same  way.  And  now  it  may  be  added, 
since  the  danger  has  apparently  passed  away,  and  the  judges  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  lately  united  and 
cemented  together  under  a  feeling  of  common  danger,  have 
come  to  feel  that  the  Federal  judiciary  is  saved  along  with  the 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         663 

Union  on  which  it  depends,  they  are  found  to  divide  again 
according  to  their  original  political  connections  and  proclivities, 
upon  the  validity  of  the  test-oath,  the  military  commissions,  and 
perhaps  others  of  the  important  measures  of  self-preservation 
and  defense  that  contributed  so  largely  to  carry  us  successfully 
through  the  war,  while  it  is  not  to  be  denied,  that  if  the  authority 
of  Congress  is  not  absolutely  menaced  at  this  very  moment  from 
the  same  direction,  this  body  at  least,  if  not  the  whole  country, 
is  affected  with  the  deepest  alarm  by  rumors  of  a  combination 
between  the  Executive  and  the  courts  for  the  overthrow  of  the 
legislative  power. 

Allow  me  to  remark,  however,  that  in  what  I  have  just 
said  in  relation  to  the  decisions  of  the  courts  I  have  not  intended 
to  inquire  who  of  the  judges  involved  were  right  and  who  were 
wrong,  because  it  is  not  necessary  to  the  argument,  and  gentle 
men  on  the  other  side,,  to  whom  it  is  equally  addressed,  might 
differ  with  me  as  to  that.  The  object  I  have  in  view  just  here 
is  only  to  make  good  the  allegation  that  the  decisions  of  the 
courts,  on  constitutional  questions  especially,  are  almost  invaria 
bly  governed  by  the  party  affiliations  of  the  members,  and  there 
fore  not  so  much  the  judgments  of  lawyers  as  of  politicians.  If 
the  fact  be  so,  it  is,  of  course,  and  must  forever  be,  in  the 
mutations  of  party  and  with  the  ever-changing  kaleidoscope  of 
politics,  entirely  fatal  to  the  idea  of  uniformity  of  decision,  and 
nothing  is  ever  to  be  settled,  as  nothing  apparently  has  been 
settled  incontrovertibly  heretofore.  Assuming  it  to  be  true, 
moreover,  there  is  an  end  of  all  argument  in  support  of  the 
judgment  of  a  divided  court,  if  there  is  not  an  end  of  all  apology 
for  treating  even  its  unanimous  decisions  on  questions  of  con 
stitutional  law  as  conclusive  upon  Congress  and  the  people  when 
they  are  not  even  conclusive  upon  themselves. 

It  was  a  grave  error,  therefore,  as  I  honestly  think,  on  the 
part  of  the  founders  of  this  Republic,  when  they  departed  from 
the  example  of  our  British  ancestors  in  giving  place  to  such  an 
anomaly,  instead  of  reserving  the  ultimate  judgment  in  all  such 
cases  to  their  own  Representatives,  or  at  least  preserving  their 
control  over  the  judiciary,  by  the  method  of  address  by  two- 
thirds  of  both  Houses,  which  was  provided  in  the  statute  of  9 
William  III,  and  has  been  copied  by  some  of  the  State  constitu 
tions,  instead  of  relying  only  on  the  inadequate  remedy  of 
impeachment,  which  corrects  no  error,  however  vital,  and  leaves 
the  defaulting  judge  to  shelter  himself  under  the  plea  that  he 
erred  from  ignorance  only,  or  without  corrupt  intent.  To  meet 
this  difficulty,  however,  I  have  had  the  honor  to  submit  a 
constitutional  amendment  to  the  same  effect,  in  order  to  main- 


664  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

tain  the  just  authority  of  the  law-making  power,  by  bringing  the 
Federal  judiciary  within  the  reasonable  control  of  Congress, 
with  such  qualifications  as  will  guard  it  sufficiently  against 
abuse,  which  I  propose  to  bring  to  the  notice  of  the  House  at 
some  more  favorable  opportunity. 

Assuming,  however,  that  the  power  of  review  is  properly 
lodged  with  the  Supreme  Court,  the  question  is  whether  the 
limitation  proposed  would  be  a  proper  one.  That  it  is  so  is,  I 
think,  demonstrable  from  well  settled  principles,  and  as  a 
logical  result  of  the  decisions  of  the  court  itself. 

It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  questions  of  this  sort  are 
of  great  delicacy,  and  ought  not  to  be  even  heard,  except  in  the 
presence  of  a  full  bench.  This  is  the  rule  in  Pennsylvania,  and 
perhaps  everywhere  else,  and  the  practice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  is  shown  by  the  Reports  to  be  made  in  strict 
accordance  with  it.  (6  Wheaton.)  There  can  be  no  possible 
objection,  therefore,  to  so  much  of  the  bill  as  merely  imparts  the 
sanction  of  law  to  what  is  already  recognized  as  a  rule  of  the 
court. 

But  the  rulings  of  the  courts  do  not  stop  short  with  the  con 
cession  of  the  principle,  that  cases  of  this  nature  ought  not  to 
be  heard  except  before  a  full  bench.  It  is  still  further  admitted, 
as  well  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  as  by  the 
judicial  tribunals  of  all  the  States,  so  far  as  I  am  acquainted 
with  them,  that  no  act  of  the  law-making  power  ought  to  be 
declared  invalid  on  the  ground  of  conflict  with  the  Constitution, 
except  in  a  very  clear  case.  (Fletcher  vs.  Peck,  6  Cranch,  128; 
Resp.  vs.  Duquet,  3  Yates,  493;  Eakin  vs.  Rob,  12  S  &  R.)  In 
the  first  named  case  Judge  Marshall  says,  in  delivering  the 
opinion  of  the  court: 

"The  question  whether  a  law  be  void  for  its  repugnancy  to  the 
Constitution  is  at  all  times  a  question  of  much  delicacy,  which  ought 
seldom,  if  ever,  to  be  decided  in  the  affirmative  in  a  doubtful  case. 
It  is  not  on  slight  implication  or  vague  conjecture  that  the  Legis- 
ture  is  to  be  presumed  to  have  transcended  its  powers  and  its  acts 
to  be  considered  void.  The  opposition  between  the  Constitution 
and  the  law  should  be  such  that  the  judge  feels  a  clear  and  strong 
conviction  of  their  incompatibility  with  each  other." 

And  this  is  reason.  When  we  look  to  the  fact  that  every 
law  enacted  by  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  must  pass 
the  ordeal  of  a  bench  of  judges  in  the  Judiciary  Committee  of 
each  House;  undergo  public  discussion  and  scrutiny  on  the 
floors  of  both;  be  affirmed  by  the  votes  of  at  least  one  hundred 
and  twenty  men,  comprising  among  them  a  large  number  of 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         665 

lawyers  of  great  experience  and  ability,  and  many  of  them  at 
least  the  peers  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  themselves, 
and  then  either  approved  by  the  President,  or  reviewed  and 
reaffirmed  upon  objections  made  by  a  two-third  vote,  it  would 
have  been  surprising,  indeed,  if  the  court  could  have  held  any 
other  language  in  regard  to  it.  When  they  say,  however,  that 
the  case  must  be  a  clear  one,  they  affirm  by  an  inevitable  logic 
the  principle  of  my  amendment.  No  case  can  be  said  to  be  a 
clear  one  where  even  one  out  of  eight  judges  dissents,  as  no 
decision  is  regarded  as  an  unimpeachable  authority,  even  in  an 
ordinary  case,  where  there  has  been  a  division  on  the  bench; 
and  none  a  fortiori  ought  to  be  considered  in  a  case  of  that  sort 
as  of  any  weight  or  value  whatever.  It  may  be  that  the  dissent 
ing  judge  is,  as  in  the  case  of  Yates,  the  ablest  lawyer  of  the 
number,  and  therefore  it  is  no  unusual  thing  to  find,  as  in  that 
of  Curtis  in  the  Dred  Scott  case,  that  the  dissenting  opinion  is 
the  more  thoroughly  considered  and  satisfactory  of  the  two.  It 
is  not  mere  brute  numbers  that  ought  to  prevail  in  the  forum  of 
reason,  or  in  other  words,  of  law,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the 
perfection  of  it.  The  vulgar  idea  of  a  majority  in  numbers, 
which  is  only  properly  admissible  on  grounds  of  convenience  if 
not  necessity,  because  in  the  case  of  conflicting  wills  it  is  impos 
sible  that  both  can  prevail,  (i  Tucker's  Black  Commentaries, 
Appendix,  168-172;  9  Dan  Abridgt  37-43  I  Story's  Commen 
taries,  section  330)  has  no  proper  place  in  the  comparison  of 
opinions,  which  are  not  to  be  tested,  as  Tacitus,  I  think, 
expresses  it  in  regard  to  the  great  councils  of  the  Germanic 
tribes,  by  numeration,  but  by  weight.  It  follows,  however, 
from  the  theory  of  the  court  itself,  that  the  law,  which  is  but  the 
voice  of  the  people  speaking  through  their  Representatives,  is 
entitled  to  the  benefit  of  every  doubt,  and  ought  not  to  be  pro 
nounced  unconstitutional  where  there  is  any  dissent  whatever; 
and  so  they  must  decide  if  they  would  be  consistent  with  them 
selves.  The  effect  of  this  amendment  therefore  is  only  to  hold 
them  to  the  logical  consequences  of  a  doctrine  which  has  been 
distinctly,  emphatically,  and  repeatedly  enunciated  by  them 
selves. 

We  are  so  much  accustomed  in  this  country  to  the  idea  of 
a  majority,  as  the  fundamental  one  on  which  all  republican 
government  must  practically  rest,  that  we  are  apt  to  suppose 
that  it  has  its  own  foundation  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  and 
that  every  departure  from  it  must  do  violence  to  the  spirit  of  our 
institutions.  Allow  me  to  say  that  this  is  a  great  mistake.  The 
idea  is  exclusively  a  social  and  political  one.  There  is  no  such 
thing  in  nature  as  the  right  of  superior  numbers  to  govern  the 


666  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

inferior.  Mr.  Burke,  whose  richly  furnished,  comprehensive, 
and  philosophic  mind  was  brought  by  the  leading  events  of  his 
time  to  the  exploration  and  analysis  of  the  great  principles  that 
lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  government,  holds  this  language  in 
his  "appeal  from  the  new  to  the  old  Whigs :" 

"We  are  so  little  affected  by  things  which  are  habitual  that  we 
consider  this  idea  of  a  majority  as  if  it  were  a  law  of  our  original 
nature;  but  such  constructive  whole,  residing  in  a  part  only,  is 
one  of  the  most  violent  fictions  of  positive  law  that  has  ever  been 
or  can  be  made  on  the  principles  of  artificial  incorporation.  Out 
of  civil  society  nature  knows  nothing  of  it :  nor  are  men,  even  when 
arranged  according  to  civil  order,  otherwise  than  by  a  very  long 
training,  brought  at  all  to  submit  to  it." 

***:)«#**** 

"This  mode  of  decision  where  wills  may  be  so  nearly  equal, 
where  according  to  circumstances  the  smaller  number  may  be  the 
stronger  force,  and  where  apparent  reason  may  be  all  on  one  side, 
and  on  the  other  little  else  than  impetuous  appetite;  all  this  must 
be  the  result  of  a  very  special  convention,  confirmed  afterward  by 
long  habits  of  obedience,  by  a  sort  of  discipline  in  society,  and  by  a 
strong  hand  vested  with  stationary,  permanent  power  to  enforce 
this  sort  of  constructive  general  will.  What  organ  is  it  that  shall 
declare  the  corporate  mind  is  so  much  a  matter  of  positive  arrange 
ment  that  several  States,  for  the  validity  of  several  of  their  acts, 
have  required  a  proportion  of  voices  much  greater  than  that  of  a 
mere  majority.  Those  proportions  are  so  entirely  governed  by 
convention  that  in  some  cases  the  minority  decides.  The  laws,  in 
many  countries,  to  condemn  require  more  than  a  mere  majority; 
less  than  an  equal  number  to  acquit.  In  our  judicial  trials  we 
require  unanimity  either  to  condemn  or  absolve.  In  some  incor 
porations  one  man  speaks  for  the  whole;  in  others  a  few.  Until  the 
other  day  in  the  constitution  of  Poland  unanimity  was  required  to 
give  validity  to  any  act  of  their  great  national  council  or  diet.  This 
approaches  much  more  nearly  to  rude  nature  than  the  institutions 
of  any  other  country.  Such,  indeed,  every  commonwealth  must  be 
without  a  positive  law  to  recognize  in  a  certain  number  the  will 
of  the  entire  body." 

Now,  a  reference  to  the  structure  of  our  own  political  machine 
will  show,,  that  while  the  majority  principle,  which  is  but  the 
common  law,  is  generally  recognized  in  public  affairs  as  the 
governing  one,  it  is  not  by  any  means  the  universal  rule  of  our 
Constitution,  and  that  the  framers  of  our  Government  have 
deviated  from  it  largely  by  way  of  check  or  limitation  upon  the 
possible  and  probable  abuse  of  such  a  power,  I  have  already 
referred  to  the  trial  by  jury,  where  unanimity,  which  is  of  its 
very  essence,  is  the  rule.  The  trial  by  impeachment,  where 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         667 

two-thirds  are  required  to  convict,  is  another  case  where  the 
majority  idea  is  departed  from.  Again,  in  the  enactment  of  our 
laws,  the  power  of  the  majority  in  either  House  is  controlled 
by  the  dissent  of  the  other,  while  both  are  bridled  by  the  one- 
man  power  residing  in  the  President,  and  a  two-third  vote  of 
each,  although  comprising  of  themselves,  by  the  very  terms  of 
the  Constitution,  the  entire  legislative  power,  is  required  to 
enable  them  to  act  effectively  alone ;  so  that  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  the  rule  of  legislation  is  a  two-third  vote.  The  like  majori 
ties  are  required  for  the  alteration  of  the  fundamental  law  itself, 
along  with  the  consent  of  at  least  three-fourths  of  all  the  States. 
In  all  these  cases  the  majority  rule  is  not  permitted  to  apply, 
and  that  for  the  transparent  reason  that  the  great  vital  interests 
of  the  State  and  people  demand  a  higher  measure  of  security. 
So  little  regard,  indeed,  is  had  for  this  cabalistic  number,  which 
is  supposed  to  be  so  full  of  preternatural  virtue,  that  a  depar 
ture  may  be  witnessed  even  in  the  opposite  direction,  in  the  rule 
which  prevails  in  nearly  all  the  States  in  the  choice  of  Presi 
dents  and  Congressmen,  at  Federal  as  well  as  State  elections, 
that  a  mere  plurality,  which  is  only  another  name  for  a  minority, 
may  elect  to  the  most  important  offices. 

If  the  majority  principle  is  the  rule  in  the  courts,  and  gener 
ally  at  the  ballot-box,  it  rests  only  on  the  same  grounds  of 
convenience  that  have  tolerated  and  recommended  the  rule 
of  a  plurality.  It  is  a  necessity  that  wherever  there  is  a  diver 
sity  of  opinion  the  larger  number  shall  prevail  if  there  is  to  be 
any  decision  at  all;  and  therefore  it  is,  that  by  the  rule  of  the 
common  law,  which  is  the  growth  of  a  nation  that  never  recog 
nized  the  rule  of  a  majority  in  affairs  of  state,  a  power  dele 
gated  to  three  or  more  persons  for  a  public  purpose,  is  exercisa- 
ble  by  a  majority  of  the  persons  named,  while  a  merely  private 
authority  cannot  be  executed  by  any  number  less  than  the  whole. 
(6  Johnson's  Report,  38.)  The  consequence  in  the  latter  case 
is,  that  it  must  fail  altogether  in  the  event  of  a  difference  of 
opinion,  which  in  affairs  of  state  would  be  entirely  inadmissi 
ble,  wherever  any  positive  act  is  to  be  done.  In  the  ordinary 
course  of  judicial  proceedings  it  way  be  admitted  that  the  rule 
of  unanimity  would  be,  if  not  absolutely  impracticable,  as  I 
think  it  is,  a  source  of  endless  and  infinite  embarrassment,  and 
result  unquestionably  in  the  great  delay,  if  not  the  absolute 
denial,  of  justice.  In  the  case,  however,  of  a  question  as  to  the 
constitutionality  of  an  act  of  Congress  there  is  no  such  exigency. 
The  requirement  of  unanimity  will  only  give  to  the  law-making 
power  the  benefit  of  the  favorable  presumption  to  which  no 
lawyer  will  dispute  that  it  is  entitled,  and  fortify  that  presump- 


668  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

tion  with  the  advantage  of  any  doubt,  by  treating  its  own  decis 
ions  as  the  rule  that  is  to  govern  the  courts  until,  at  least,  they 
shall  have  been  reversed  by  the  united  and  concurring  voices  of 
the  whole  of  that  judicatory  which  claims  to  hold  a  delegated 
power  to  sit  in  judgment  upon  its  authority.  There  will  be  no 
such  inconvenience  as  a  failure  to  decide.  When  the  judges 
differ  they  will  have  already  decided  that  the  law  is  constitu 
tional  by  failing  to  agree  that  it  is  otherwise,  and  the  law  of 
Congress  will  prevail,  as  it  ought  to  do,  whenever  they  cannot  be 
brought  to  agree  that  it  is  wrong. 

Having  thus  shown,  as  I  think,  the  entire  reasonableness  and 
propriety  of  the  change  proposed,  the  next  and  last  question  is 
as  to  our  power  to  effect  it.  And  here,  I  think,  there  is  no  doubt 
or  difficulty. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  Constitution  provides  that — 

"The  judicial  power  shall  be  vested  in  one  Supreme  Court  and 
such  inferior  courts  as  the  Congress  may  from  time  to  time  ordain 
and  establish." 

There  is  nothing  here,  however,  as  to  the  number  of  judges 
who  shall  compose  it;  nothing  as  to  the  number  who  shall  be 
competent  to  pass  upon  such  questions  as  may  come  before  it. 
It  is  unquestionable  that  Congress  may  fix  the  number  of  the 
court  at  its  own  discretion,  and  it  has  always  done  so.  It  is 
equally  clear  that  it  may  determine  how  many  of  them  shall  be 
required  to  constitute  a  court  for  business  purposes,  and  this  it 
has  also  done  by  declaring  how  many  shall  be  necessary  to  make 
a  quorum.  As  the  law  now  stands  it  requires  more  than  two- 
thirds  of  that  tribunal,  as  at  present  organized,  for  this  purpose. 
The  constitutionality  of  that  law  has  never  been  doubted  by 
anybodv.  If  it  was  valid  when  enacted,  it  is  certainly  not  made 
otherwise  by  the  reduction  that  has  since  taken  place  in  the 
number  of  the  judges.  If  it  is  still  the  law,  then,  by  a  further 
reduction  of  the  number,  the  now  existing  quorum  might  become 
the  whole,  and  upon  this  argument  the  constitutionality  of  so 
much  of  the  amendment  at  least  as  requires  a  hearing  before  a 
full  bench  is  clearly  demonstrated. 

And  now,  in  the  second  place,  as  to  the  power  of  Congress 
to  require  the  concurring  opinions  of  the  whole  of  what  it  may 
choose  to  declare  a  quorum,  upon  any  decision  which  they  may 
propose  to  make  against  the  validity  of  any  of  its  laws. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  always  that  the  authority  of  the 
court  is  a  purely  delegated  one.  It  does  not  follow,  therefore, 
as  a  conclusion  of  reason,  from  the  doctrine  that  a  majority  of 
several  joint  owners  may  dispose  of  the  joint  property,  or 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         669 

because  a  corporate  body  may  act  in  the  same  way  in  relation 
to  a  matter  which  concerns  themselves,  that  the  same  rule  shall 
apply  to  a  public  trust,  except,  perhaps,  in  cases  where  it 
is  incapable  of  execution  in  any  other  way.  The  people  are 
entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the  aggregate  wisdom  of  the  bench, 
in  the  concurring  judgments  of  all  those  who  compose  it. 
The  Supreme  Court  might  have  been  constituted  of  a  single 
judge,  and  ought  to,  and  perhaps  would  have  been  so  consti 
tuted  but  for  the  proverbial  and  generally  received  hypoth 
esis,  that  wisdom  is  to  be  found  rather  in  "the  multitude  of 
counsellors"  than  in  the  few — not,  however,  in  view  of  their 
ultimate  disagreement,  but  to  the  end  that,  by  comparison  and 
even  the  possible  shock  and  conflict  of  opinions,  the  truth  may 
be  evolved  and  harmony  secured,,  just  as  in  the  system  of  the 
universe,  it  is  said  by  the  poet,  that  "all  nature's  difference 
makes  all  nature's  peace."  It  can  hardly  be  supposed  that,  in 
the  constitution  of  a  bench  of  eight  or  nine  judges,  it  was 
intended  that  five  only  of  the  number  should  decide,  or  expected 
that  a  sound  conclusion  could  be  reached  by  any  result  so  near 
an  equipoise.  To  claim  for  this  larger  fraction  the  power  of 
a  constructive  whole  is  not  too  strongly  characterized  by  Mr. 
Burke,  in  the  passage  already  cited,  as  "one  of  the  most  violent 
fictions  of  positive  law  that  have  ever  been  or  can  be  made  on 
the  principles  of  artificial  incorporation,"  and  "cannot  be  so 
made,  in  a  Commonwealth,  without  a  positive  law  to  recognize 
it."  There  is  no  law,  however,  in  the  present  case,  except  the 
common  law,  resting  on  the  reason  of  the  thing,  which  is  only 
its  supposed  necessity  in  ordinary  cases ;  and  this,  as  a  mere  rule 
of  procedure,  not  entering  into  the  constitution  of  the  tribunal, 
and  only  prescribing  a  law  for  its  government.  If  it  inhered  nec 
essarily  in  that  constitution — if  it  were  of  the  essence  of  a  court 
that  it  should  act  in  all  cases  by  mere  majorities — if,  in  other 
words,  it  were  strictly  definable  as  a  machine  whose  principle  of 
motion  was  of  that  sort  only,  it  might  be  objected,  perhaps,  that 
the  Constitution  had  settled  it.  But  this,  I  suppose,  will  hardly 
be  pretended  by  anybody.  In  any  other  aspect  of  the  question, 
however,  it  is  but  a  rule  of  the  common  law  for  the  regulation 
and  more  effective  working  of  these  tribunals;  in  which  case 
there  is  nothing,  of  course,  to  prevent  its  abrogation  by  the 
power  that  makes  and  unmakes  the  law,  in  accordance  with  its 
own  sovereign  will,  which  is  only  the  will  of  the  people  declaring 
itself  through  their  representatives.  So  long  as  the  authority 
to  decide  is  still  left  and  still  exercisable  by  the  courts,  at  their 
own  discretion,  and  upon  their  own  judgments,  they  have  no 
more  right  to  complain  that  they  are  all  required  to  agree  in 


670  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

order  to  nullify  the  law  than  that  they  are  not  now  permitted  to 
do  the  same  thing,  as  a  quasi-corporate  body,  without  the  con 
currence  of  a  majority  of  such  a  quorum  as  it  has  pleased  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  to  indicate. 

It  is  not  necessary,  however,  to  either  of  the  pending  amend 
ments,  to  borrow  the  aid  of  the  general  principle  that  Congress 
may  alter  and  modify  the  rule  of  the  common  law.  The  power 
is  to  be  found  in  the  Constitution  itself,  so  far  at  least  as  regards 
the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  court,  which  is  the  whole  extent 
of  this  bill.  That  jurisdiction  which  extends  to  all  cases,  except 
those  "affecting  ambassadors,  other  public  ministers  and  consuls, 
and  those  in  which  a  State  is  a  party/'  is  conferred  only  with 
the  express  reservation  that  it  shall  be  exercised  and  enjoyed 
"with  such  exceptions  and  under  such  regulations  as  the  Con 
gress  shall  make."  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  language? 
The  word  "regulations"  imports  no  more  than  rules  or  laws. 
That  it  carries  with  it  any  power  to  change  the  rule  of  decision, 
so  as  to  impose  another  law  upon  the  court  than  the  action  of  its 
own  judicial  mind,  or  to  do  anything  further  than  prescribe  the 
mode  of  decision,  I  do  not  claim.  It  will  not  be  disputed,  at 
least,  that  under  this  provision  it  may  limit  the  jurisdiction  to 
such  cases  as  it  thinks  proper,  and  settle  in  its  own  way  the 
whole  process  of  removal  to,  and  treatment  in  the  appellate 
court.  If  it  shall  think  proper,  then,  to  accord  that  jurisdiction 
only  on  the  condition  that  none  of  its  own  acts  shall  be  over 
ruled  on  constitutional  grounds  without  the  judgment  of  an  undi 
vided  court,  who  shall  gainsay  its  right  so  to  do,  when  it  may 
even  refuse  the  jurisdiction  altogether  where  the  court  below 
may  have  affirmed  the  validity  of  its  enactments? 

And  now,  having  fully  vindicated,  as  I  trust  I  have  done, 
the  principles  of  the  amendment  I  have  had  the  honor  to  submit, 
covering,  as  it  does,  as  well  the  modification  on  which  the  Judici 
ary  Committee  has  agreed,  and  which  in  default  of  the  higher 
security  will  not  be  unacceptable  to  me,  I  must  be  allowed  a  word 
in  conclusion  on  the  reasons  which  have  prompted  the  introduc 
tion  and  agitation  at  the  present  moment  of  a  question  that  seems, 
in  some  measure,  to  have  taken  the  press  and  country  and  even 
the  profession  by  surprise,  as  a  very  novel  if  not  a  very,  bold 
experiment. 

It  will  be  said,  perhaps,  as  it  has  already  been  more  than 
whispered  in  some  quarters  of  the  Union,  that  this  alarming 
proposition  is  only  a  mere  expedient  for  the  time,  intended  to 
serve  the  purposes  of  the  moment,  and  with  a  view  only  to  a 
particular  case;  just  as  the  important  provision  of  the  tenure- 
of-office  law  extending  its  operation  to  the  heads  of  Depart- 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         6/1 

ments,  which  without  much  active  sympathy  or  support  from  any 
quarter,  and  only  by  persevering  and  persistent  effort,  and  after 
repeated  defeats,  I  was  happily  enabled  to  see  engrafted  upon 
this  law,  against  the  apparent  sense  of  the  Senate  and  the 
unyielding  opposition  of  a  large  portion  of  the  Republican 
members  of  this  House,  has  been  published  to  the  world  through 
all  the  organs  of  public  opinion,  until  it  has  persuaded  everybody 
here  and  the  echo  of  it  has  come  back  even  from  the  other  side 
of  the  Atlantic,  as  a  mere  party  contrivance  to  save  a  particular 
officer — who  was  known  by  me  at  the  time  to  be  himself  opposed 
to  it — instead  of  a  great  measure  of  state,  prompted  by  a  con 
viction  of  the  absolute  necessity  of  securing  the  independence 
of  a  set  of  functionaries  who  had  come  to  look  upon  the  master 
of  their  fortunes  as  the  rightful  master  of  their  wills,  and 
intended  for  all  heads  of  Departments  and  all  time.  The 
impatient  urgency  with  which  the  pending  measure  is  just  now 
pressed,  even  in  its  imperfect  shape,  after  having  slept  so  long 
undisturbed,  may  seem  to  give  an  air  of  plausibility  to  this  sug 
gestion.  If  the  fact  of  its  introduction  nearly  a  year  ago 
is  not  a  sufficient  answer,  I  may  be  allowed  to  say,  at 
least  for  myself,  that  I  have  never  belonged  to  that  timid 
school  of  practitioners,  which  deals  only  in  palliatives, 
when  great  public  evils  which  threaten  the  safety  of  the 
State  are  to  be  remedied.  When  I  beheld  the  law  obstructed  on 
system,  and  arrived  at  the  conviction — shared  with  me  by  a 
majority  of  this  House — that  the  supreme  Executive  Magistrate 
of  this  nation,  the  officer  intrusted  under  the  Constitution  with 
the  execution  of  its  laws,  instead  of  performing  that  duty  had 
disclosed  a  settled  purpose  to  thwart  your  measures  and  defy 
your  will,  I  was  at  once  prepared  to  meet  that  exigency  by  the 
complete  and  obvious  and  radical  measure  of  relief,  which  I 
thought  the  Constitution  had  placed  in  our  hands,  instead  of 
resorting  to  any  evasive  or  circuitous  process,  any  mere  experi 
ments  of  doubtful  validity  or  dangerous  example,  to  accomplish 
the  same  object.  When  I  saw  again  the  rare  chance,  the  golden 
opportunity,  of  correcting  a  capital  error,  canonized  in  some  sort 
by  a  practice  coeval  with  the  Government,  in  the  concession  of 
the  absolute  power  of  removal  to  the  President,  which  had  been 
so  fatally  used  and  abused,  I  was  equally  ready  to  take  advan 
tage  of  the  feeling  of  peril  engendered  by  the  usurpations  of 
that  officer,  for  the  purpose  of  accomplishing  a  long  desiderated 
object,  which  would  have  been  proper  at  all  times,  but  had 
never  been  possible  till  now.  So  when  the  wild  vagaries  of 
the  courts,  the  obvious  political  leanings  of  the  judges  in  great 
affairs  cf  State,  and  the  atrocious  and  abominable  doctrines  to 


672  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

which  the  highest  of  them  was  not  ashamed  to  give  utterance, 
had  stripped  them  of  the  awful  prestige — the  more  than  Druid- 
ical  sanctity — that  had  surrounded  and  covered  them  from  the 
rude  gaze  of  the  people — when  the  very  priesthood  of  the  altar 
itself  had  drawn  aside  the  curtain  of  the  sanctuary  before  the 
eyes  of  the  nation,  in  a  revelation  that  surpassed  in  hideousness 
and  horror  all  that  the  poet's  conception  had  imagined  of  the 
impostor  prophet,  when  he  lifted  his  veil  in  the  presence  of  his 
deluded  followers  and  proclaimed  in  their  ears  in  thunder  tones : 

"Here,  ye    wise    saints,    behold    your  light,  your  star! 
Ye  would  be  fools  and  victims,  and  ye  are !" 

I  was  equally  prepared  to  improve  the  occasion,  by  striking 
boldly  at  the  dangerous  anomaly  of  a  power  in  this  nation  that 
was  higher  than  its  Constitution  and  its  laws.  The  time  had 
not  yet  come  to  do  this  thing,  until  the  red  harvest  of  death  had 
been  gathered  from  the  seed  thus  sown,  in  so  many  battle-fields ; 
but  revolutions  are  the  opportunities  of  statesmen,  and  he  is  no 
statesman  who  hesitates  when  the  way  is  providentially  leveled 
before  him,  and  he  is  thus  invited  to  enter  upon  it ;  as  he,  too,  is 
none,  who  dreads  the  idle  and  unmeaning  taunt  that  he  is  merely 
legislating  for  the  evil  that  is  imminent,  just  as  though  it  were 
not  the  business  of  the  statesman  to  meet  the  danger  that  is 
exigent.  In  quiet  times  the  chances  for  reform  are  rare.  The 
measure  now  proposed  was  a  proper  one  at  all  times.  The 
present  condition  of  the  country  only  demonstrates,  through  an 
imminent  peril,  its  absolute  necessity. 

The  amendment  of  Mr.  Williams  was  rejected,  but,  as 
General  Grant  at  once  restored  the  Secretaryship  to  Mr. 
Stanton  upon  the  action  of  the  Senate  regarding  him,  the 
way  was  open  for  the  President  to  make  a  new  move, 
boldly  ignoring  the  Tenure-of-Office  Act  by  transferring 
all  the  property  of  Stanton's  office  to  the  Adjutant  Gen 
eral,  and  attempting  to  make  the  latter  the  subject  of  the 
legal  battle.  This  it  was  which  at  once  determined  the 
House  upon  impeachment  proceedings  and  removed  the 
contest  from  the  field  of  the  courts,  because  of  the  viola 
tion  of  the  Tenure-of-Office  Act.  The  vote  was  taken  on 
February  24th,  and  stood  126  to  47.1  Meanwhile,  the 
testimony  taken  by  the  judiciary  committee  had  been 
transferred  to  the  committee  on  reconstruction,  of  which 
Mr.  Stevens  was  chairman.  At  the  latter  gentleman's 

1  Congressional  Globe,  Fortieth  Congress,  26.  Session,  Part  2,  p.   1400. 


\\ilson  Boutwell  l.ogau 

Butler  Steven?  Williams  Binuliam 


THK  MANAGERS  OF  IMPEACHMENT 

Halftone  of  a  Brady  photograph  iu  possession  of  the 
Misses  Williams,  Philadelphia 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         673 

motion,  a  committee  to  prepare  articles  of  impeachment, 
based  on  the  Stanton  incident,  was  appointed,  with  Mr. 
Boutwell  as  chairman.  The  articles  finally  adopted  were 
a  few  direct  charges  of  conspiracy  with  the  Adjutant 
General  in  the  removal  of  Stanton.  On  March  2d  (1868) 
the  House  elected  the  managers  of  impeachment,  the 
vote  resulting  as  follows:  John  A.  Bingham  of  Ohio,  114 
(out  of  118)  ;  George  S.  Boutwell  of  Massachusetts,  113; 
James  F.  Wilson  of  Iowa,  112;  Benjamin  F.  Butler  of 
Massachusetts,  108;  Mr.  Williams,  107;  John  A.  Logan  of 
Illinois,  106;  and  Thaddeus  Stevens  of  Pennsylvania, 
105 — very  nearly  a  reversal  of  the  order  in  which  they 
were  nominated,  the  gentleman  who  nominated  evidently 
intending  Mr.  Stevens  for  chairman.  There  were  nine 
others  who  received  a  few  votes,  ranging  from  I  to  22. 
This  list  had  been  determined  in  a  caucus  of  the  Repub 
licans,  and  it  is  significant  that  when  the  managers  them 
selves  came  to  elect  their  chairman,  Stevens,  Logan  and 
Butler  voted  for  Boutwell,  while  Williams  and  Wilson 
preferred  Bingham.  The  latter's  dissatisfaction  with  the 
outcome — for  Bingham  and  Wilson  had  opposed  impeach 
ment  at  first — led  Boutwell  to  resign  in  favor  of  Bing 
ham,  so  that  the  latter  became  chairman  of  the  board.1 

To  enter  into  all  the  details  of  the  trial — or  even  to  take 
note  of  all  of  Mr.  Williams'  own  varied  activities  in  Con 
gress,  which  were  by  no  means  confined  to  this  question — 
is  not  possible  in  limited  space.  The  trial  opened  on 
March  I3th  (1868)  before  the  Senate  with  the  Chief  Jus 
tice  presiding.2  What  with  all  the  preparation  of  pro 
cedure  and  examination  of  witnesses  it  was  some  days  be 
fore  the  arguments  began,  and  these  were  so  numerous 
and  extended  that  it  was  April  27th  before  the  argument 
of  Mr.  Williams — the  final  one  of  the  prosecution,  except 
the  closing  one  by  their  chairman — even  began.  It  occu 
pied  two  sessions  of  one  day  and  a  part  of  the  next.  "Of 
all  the  addresses  made  in  this  trial,"  says  a  late  writer  on 
the  proceedings  who  does  not  favor  Mr.  Williams'  side 


1  "Reminiscences  of  Sixty  Years  in   Public  Affairs,"  by   George   S.    Bout- 
well,  Vol.  II,  p.  119. 

2  The  first  session  of  the    court    was    on    this    date.      See    supplement    to 
Congressional   Globe,    "Trial   of  the   President,"   2d   Session,    Fortieth   Congress, 
1868. 


674  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

of  the  case,  "his  was  the  most  ornate  in  diction  and  meta 
phorical  in  style,  and,  in  its  description  of  the  enormity 
of  the  defendant's  guilt  and  its  personal  assaults  upon 
Andrew  Johnson,  it  was  more  hyperbolical  and  more 
bitter  than  even  Mr.  Boutwell's."1  He  adds,  farther  on, 
also,  in  reference  to  Chairman  Bingham's  closing 
address,  "it  does  not  rise  to  the  heights  of  feeling  we 
still  detect  beneath  the  ornate  periods  of  Williams."2 

"Mr.  President  and  Senators  of  the  United  States/'  Mr. 
Williams  began,3  "not  unused  to  the  conflicts  of  the  forum  I 
appear  in  your  presence  to-day  in  obedience  to  the  command  of 
the  Representatives  of  the  American  people,  under  a  sense  of 
responsibility  which  I  have  never  felt  before.  This  august 
tribunal  whose  judges  are  the  elect  of  mighty  provinces — the 
presence  at  your  bar  of  the  Representatives  of  a  domain  that 
rivals  in  extent  the  dominion  of  the  Caesars,  and  of  a  civilization 
that  transcends  any  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  to  demand 
judgment  upon  the  high  delinquent  whom  they  have  arraigned 
in  the  name  of  the  American  people  for  high  crimes  and  misde 
meanors  against  the  State,  the  dignity  of  the  delinquent  himself, 
a  king  in  everything  but  the  name  and  paraphernalia  and  inheri 
tance  of  royalty,  these  crowded  galleries,  and,  more  than  all, 
that  greater  world  outside  which  stands  on  tiptoe  as  it  strains 
its  ears  to  catch  from  the  electric  messenger  the  first  tidings  of  a 
verdict  which  is  either  to  send  a  thrill  of  joy  through  an 
afflicted  land,  or  to  rack  it  anew  with  the  throes  of  anarchy  and 
the  convulsions  of 'despair,  all  remind  me  of  the  colossal  pro 
portions  of  the  issue  you  are  assembled  to  try.  I  cannot  but 
remember,  too,  that  the  scene  before  me  is  without  example  or 
parallel  in  human  history.  Kings,  it  is  true,  have  been 
uncrowned,  and  royal  heads  have  fallen  upon  the  scaffold;  but 
in  two  single  instances  only,  as  I  think,  have  the  formalities  of 
law  been  ostensibly  invoked  to  give  a  coloring  of  order  and  of 
justice  to  the  bloody  tragedy.  It  is  only  in  this  free  land  that 
a  constitutional  tribunal  has  been  charged  for  the  first  time 
with  the  sublime  task  of  vindicating  an  outraged  law  against  the 
highest  of  its  ministers,  and  passing  judgment  upon  the  question 
whether  the  ruler  of  a  nation  shall  be  stripped,  under  the  law 

1  "The  Impeachment  and  Trial  of  Andrew  Johnson,"  by  David  Miller 
Dewitt,  1903,  p.  483. 

•  "The  Impeachment  and  Trial  of  Andrew  Johnson,"  by  David  Miller 
Dewitt,  1903,  p.  512. 

8  Supplement  to  Congressional  Globe,  "Trial  of  the  President,"  Fortieth 
Congress,  2d  Session,  1868,  p.  324. 


THK  MANAGERS  OF  IMPEACHMENT 
Halftone  of  first  page  of  /farmer's  Weekly  of  March  21,  1868,  in  the  Philadelphia  Library 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         675 

and   without   shock   or   violence,   of   the   power   which   he   has 
abused. 

''This  great  occasion  was  not  sought  by  us.  The  world  will 
bear  the  Representatives  of  the  people  witness  that  they  have 
not  come  here  for  light  and  transient  causes,  but  for  the  reason 
only  that  this  issue  has  been  forced  upon  them  by  a  long  series 
of  bold  assumptions  of  power  on  the  part  of  the  Executive,  fol 
lowing  each  other  with  almost  the  blazing  and  blinding  con 
tinuity  of  the  lightning  of  the  tropics,  and  culminating  at  last 
in  a  mortal  challenge,  which  in  the  defense  of  their  constitutional 
power  as  a  branch  of  the  American  Congress,  and  as  faithful 
sentinels  over  the  liberties  of  the  people,  it  was  impossible  for 
them  to  decline.  With  the  first,  open  defiance  of  the  legislative 
will  they  were  left,  of  course,  with  no  alternative  but  to  abdicate 
their  rule  or  to  vindicate  their  right  to  make  the  law  and  see 
that  it  was  obeyed.  To  this  imperious  necessity  the  people,  in 
whose  name  they  speak — a  branch  of  that  race  whose  quick 
sensibility  to  public  danger  has  ever  kept  a  sleepless  vigil  over 
its  liberties — have  yielded  at  last  with  a  reluctance  which  noth 
ing  but  the  weariness  of  civil  strife,  the  natural  longing  for 
repose,  the  apprehensive  sense  that  it  was  'better,  perhaps,  to 
bear  the  ills  we  had  than  fly  to  others  that  we  knew  not  of— 
the  reflection  that  this  Administration  must  have  an  end,  and 
above  all,  perhaps,  the  delusive  hope  that  its  law-defying  head 
himself  would  ultimately  submit  to  a  necessity  which  was  as 
strong  as  fate,  could  have  brought  about,  or  would  have,  per 
haps,  excused.  He  has  misunderstood  their  reasons,  as  his 
counsel  show  that  they  do  now,  mistaken  their  temper,  and 
presumed  upon  their  forbearance.  He  has  forgotten  that  there 
was  a  point  at  which  the  conflict  must  end  in  the  shock  of  two 
opposing  forces,  and  the  overthrow  of  one  or  other  of  the  antag 
onistic  elements.  It  was  necessary,  perhaps,  in  the  order  of 
Providence  that  he  should  reach  that  point  by  striking  such  a 
blow  at  the  public  liberties  as  should  awaken  the  people  as  with 
an  earthquake  shock  to  the  consciousness  that  the  toleration  of 
usurpation  brings  no  security  to  nations. 

"To  show,  however,  how  much  they  have  borne  and  for 
borne,  perhaps  forgiven,  for  the  sake  of  peace,  and  how  much 
they  now  pass  over  for  the  sake  of  a  speedy  solution  of  the 
impending  trouble  which  has  impeded  the  onward  and  upward 
movement  of  this  great  Government,  and  spread  confusion  and 
disorder  through  many  of  its  Departments,  and  what,  moreover, 
is  the  true  import  and  significance  of  the  acts  for  which  the  Pres 
ident  is  now  arraigned,  I  must  be  allowed,  with  your  indulgence, 
to  take  up  for  a  moment  the  key  which  is  required  to  unlock  the 


676  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

mysteries  of  the  position.  The  man  who  supposes  that  this  is  but 
a  question  of  the  removal  of  an  obnoxious  officer,  a  mere  private 
quarrel  between  two  belligerents  at  the  other  end  of  the  avenue, 
wherein  it  is  of  no  great  national  consequence  which  of  the 
opposing  parties  shall  prevail,  has  no  adequate  apprehension  of 
the  gravity  of  the  case,  and  greatly  disparages  the  position  and 
the  motives  of  the  high  accusers.  The  House  of  Representa 
tives  espouses  no  man's  quarrel,  however  considerable  he  may 
be.  It  has  but  singled  out  from  many  others  of  equal  weight  the 
facts  now  charged,  as  facts  for  the  most  part  of  recent  occur 
rence,  of  great  notoriety,  and  of  easy  proof,  by  way  of  testing  a 
much  greater  question  without  loss  of  time.  The  issue  here  is 
between  two  mightier  antagonists,  one  the  Chief  Executive  Magis 
trate  of  this  nation  and  the  other  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
for  whom  the  Secretary  of  War  now  holds  almost  the  only 
strong  position  of  which  they  have  not  been  dispossessed.  It 
is  but  a  renewal  on  American  soil  of  the  old  battle  between  the 
royal  prerogative  and  the  privileges  of  the  Commons,  which  was 
closed  in  England  with  the  reigns  of  the  Stuarts — a  struggle  for 
the  mastery  between  a  temporary  Executive  and  the  legislative 
power  of  a  free  State  over  the  most  momentous  question  that 
has  ever  challenged  the  attention  of  a  people.  The  counsel  for 
the  President,  reflecting,  of  course,  the  views  of  their  employer, 
would  have  you  to  believe  that  the  removal  of  a  departmental 
head  is  an  affair  of  State  too  small  to  be  worthy  of  such  an 
avenger  as  this  which  we  propose.  Standing  alone,  stripped  of 
all  the  attendant  circumstances  that  explain  the  act  and  show  the 
deadly  animus  by  which  it  was  inspired,  it  is  not  improbable  that 
there  are  some  who  might  have  been  induced  to  think,  with 
them,  that  a  remedy  so  extreme  as  this  was  more  than  adequate. 
It  is  only  under  the  light  shed  upon  the  particular  issue  by  ante 
cedent  facts  which  have  now  passed  into  history  that  the  giant 
proportions  of  this  controversy  can  be  fully  seen,  if  they  are  not 
made  sufficiently  apparent  now  by  the  defiant  tone  of  the  Presi 
dent  and  the  formidable  pretensions  set  up  by  him  in  his  thought 
fully  considered  and  painfully  elaborated  plea. 

"The  not  irrelevant  question  'Who  is  Andrew  Johnson  ?'  has 
been  asked  by  one  of  his  counsel,  as  it  has  often  been  by  him 
self,  and  answered  in  the  same  way,  by  showing  who  he  was 
and  what  he  had  done  before  the  people  of  the  loyal  States  so 
generously  intrusted  him  with  that  contingent  power  which  was 
made  absolute  only  for  the  advantage  of  defeated  and  discom 
forted  treason  by  the  murderous  pistol  of  an  assassin.  I  will 
not  stop  now  to  inquire  as  to  scenes  enacted  on  this  floor  so 
eloquently  rehearsed  by  the  counsel  for  the  President,  with  two 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         677 

pictures  of  so  opposite  a  character  before  me,  or  even  to  inquire 
whether  his  resistance  to  the  hegira  of  the  southern  Senators 
was  not  merely  a  question,  himself  being  the  witness,  as  to  the 
propriety  and  wisdom  of  such  a  step  at  that  particular  time.  The 
opportunity  occurs  just  here  to  answer  it  as  it  is  put,  by  showing 
who  Andrew  Johnson  is,  and  what  he  has  been  since  the  unhappy 
hour  of  that  improvident  and  unreflecting  gift.  Eheu!  quantum 
mutatus  ab  illo!  Alas,  how  changed,  how  fallen  from  that  high 
estate  that  won  for  him  the  support  of  a  too  confiding  people ! 
Would  that  it  could  have  been  said  of  him  as  of  that  apostate 
spirit  who  was  hurled  in  hideous  ruin  and  combustion  down  from 
Heaven's  crystal  battlements,  that  even  in  his  fall  he  'had  not 
yet  lost  all  his  original  brightness  nor  appeared  less  than  Arch 
angel  ruined.' 

"The  master-key  to  the  whole  history  of  his  administration, 
which  has  involved  not  a  mere  harmless  difference  of  opinion,  as 
one  of  his  counsel  seems  to  think,  on  a  question  where  gentle 
men  might  afford  to  disagree  without  a  quarrel,  but  one  long  and 
unseemly  struggle  by  the  Executive  against  the  legislative 
power,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  of  an  early  and  persistent  pur 
pose  of  forcing  the  rebel  States  into  the  Union  by  means  of  his 
executive  authority,  in  the  interests  of  the  men  who  had  lifted 
their  parricidal  hands  against  it,  on  terms  dictated  by  himself, 
and  in  defiance  of  the  will  of  the  loyal  people  of  the  United  States 
as  declared  through  their  Representatives.  To  accomplish  this 
object,  how  much  has  he  not  done  and  how  much  has  a  long- 
suffering  people  not  passed  over  without  punishment  and  almost 
without  rebuke  ?  Let  history,  let  your  public  records,  which  are 
the  only  authentic  materials  of  history,  answer,  and  they  will  say 
that — 

"For  this,  instead  of  convening  the  Congress  in  the  most 
momentous  crisis  of  the  State,  he  had  issued  his  royal  proclama 
tions  for  the  assembling  of  conventions  and  the  erection  of  State 
governments,  prescribing  the  qualifications  of  the  voters,  and 
settling  the  conditions  of  their  admission  into  the  Union. 

"For  this  he  had  created  offices  unknown  to  the  law,  and 
filled  them  with  men  notoriously  disqualified  by  law,  at  salaries 
fixed  by  his  own  mere  will. 

"For  this  he  had  paid  those  officers  in  contemptuous  disre 
gard  of  law,  and  paid  them,  too,  out  of  the  contingent  fund  of 
one  of  the  Departments  of  the  Government. 

"For  this  he  had  supplied  the  expenses  of  his  new  govern 
ments  by  turning  over  to  them  the  spoils  of  the  dead  confederacy, 
and  authorizing  his  satraps  to  levy  taxes  from  the  conquered 
people. 


6/8  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"For  this  he  had  passed  away  unnumbered  millions  of  the 
public  property  to  rebel  railroad  companies  without  considera 
tion,  or  sold  it  to  them  in  clear  violation  of  law,  on  long  credits, 
at  a  valuation  of  his  own  and  without  any  security  whatever. 

"For  this  he  had  stripped  the  Bureau  of  Freedmen  and 
Refugees  of  its  munificent  endowment,  by  tearing  from  it  the 
lands  appropriated  by  Congress  to  the  loyal  wards  of  the  Repub 
lic,  and  restoring  to  the  rebels  their  justly  forfeited  estates  after 
the  same  had  been  vested  by  law  in  the  Government  of  the 
United  States. 

"For  this  he  had  invaded  with  a  ruthless  hand  the  very  pen 
etralia  of  the  Treasury,  and  plundered  its  contents  for  the 
benefit  of  favored  rebels  by  ordering  the  restoration  of  the 
proceeds  of  sales  of  captured  and  abandoned  property  which  had 
been  placed  in  its  custody  by  law. 

"For  this  he  had  grossly  abused  the  pardoning  power  con 
ferred  on  him  by  the  Constitution  in  releasing  the  most  active 
and  formidable  of  the  leaders  of  the  rebellion  with  a  view  to 
their  service  in  the  furtherance  of  his  policy,  and  even  delegated 
that  power  for  the  same  objects  to  men  who  were  indebted  to 
its  exercise  for  their  own  escape  from  punishment. 

"For  this  he  had  obstructed  the  course  of  public  justice  not 
only  by  refusing  to  enforce  the  laws  enacted  for  the  suppression 
of  the  rebellion  and  the  punishment  of  treason,  but  by  going  into 
the  courts  and  turning  the  greatest  of  the  public  malefactors 
loose,  and  surrendering  all  control  over  them  by  the  restoration 
of  their  estates. 

"For  this  he  had  abused  the  appointing  power  by  the  removal 
on  system  of  meritorious  public  officers  for  no  other  reason  than 
because  they  would  not  assist  him  in  his  attempt  to  overthrow 
the  Constitution  and  usurp  the  legislative  power  of  the  Govern 
ment. 

"For  this  he  had  invaded  the  rightful  privileges  of  the  Sen 
ate  by  refusing  to  sent  in  nominations  of  officers  appointed  by 
him  during  the  recess  of  that  body,  and  after  their  adjournment 
reappointing  others  who  had  been  rejected  by  them  as  unfit  for 
the  places  for  which  they  had  been  appointed. 

"For  this  he  had  broken  the  privileges  of,  and  insulted  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  by  instructing  them  that  the  work 
of  reconstruction  belonged  to  him  only,  and  that  they  had  no 
legislative  right  or  duty  in  the  premises,  but  only  to  register  his 
will  by  throwing  open  their  doors  to  such  claimants  as  might 
come  there  with  commissions  from  his  pretended  governments, 
that  were  substantially  his  own. 


X    * 

L-       M 


II 


To  be  taken  up  at 


U.-S 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         679 

"For  this,  on  their  refusal  to  obey  his  imperial  rescript,  he 
had  arraigned  them  publicly  as  a  revolutionary  assembly  and  not 
a  Congress,  without  the  power  to  legislate  for  the  States 
excluded,  and  as  'traitors,  at  the  other  end  of  the  line/  in 
actual  rebellion  against  the  people  they  had  subdued. 

"For  this  he  had  grossly  abused  the  veto  power,  by  disap 
proving  every  important  measure  of  legislation  that  concerned 
the  rebel  States,  in  accordance  with  his  public  declaration  that 
he  would  veto  all  the  measures  of  the  law-making  power  when 
ever  they  came  to  him. 

"For  this  he  had  deliberately  and  confessedly  exercised  a 
dispensing  power  over  the  test-oath  law,  by  appointing  notorious 
rebels  to  important  places  in  the  revenue  service,  on  the  avowed 
ground  that  the  policy  of  Congress,  in  that  regard,  was  not  in 
accordance  with  his  opinions. 

"For  this  he  had  obstructed  the  settlement  of  the  nation,  by 
exerting  all  his  influence  to  prevent  the  people  of  the  rebel 
States  from  accepting  the  constitutional  amendment  or  organiz 
ing  under  the  laws  of  Congress,  and  impressing  them  with  the 
opinion  that  Congress  was  blood  thirsty  and  implacable,  and  that 
their  only  refuge  was  with  him. 

"For  this  he  had  brought  the  patronage  of  his  office  into 
conflict  with  the  freedom  of  elections,  by  allowing  and  encourag 
ing  his  official  retainers  to  travel  over  the  country,  attending 
political  conventions  and  addressing  the  people  in  support  of  his 
policy. 

"For  this,  if  he  did  not  enact  the  part  of  a  Cromwell,  by 
striding  into  the  Halls  of  the  Representatives  of  the  people  and 
saying  to  one  man,  'You  are  a  hyprocrite;'  to  another,  'You  are 
a  whoremonger;'  to  a  third,  'You  are  an  adulterer;'  and  to  the 
whole,  'You  are  no  longer  a  Parliament;'  he  had  rehearsed  the 
same  part  substantially  outside,  by  traveling  over  the  country, 
and,  in  indecent  harangues,  assailing  the  conduct  and  impeaching 
the  motives  of  its  Congress,  inculcating  disobedience  to  its 
authority  by  endeavoring  to  bring  it  into  disrepute,  declaring 
publicly  of  one  of  its  members  that  he  was  a  traitor,  of  another 
that  he  was  an  assassin,  and  of  the  whole  that  they  were  no 
longer  a  Congress. 

"For  this,  in  addition  to  the  oppression  and  bloodshed  that 
had  everywhere  resulted  from  his  known  partiality  for  traitors, 
he  had  winked  at,  if  not  encouraged,  the  murder  of  loyal 
citizens  in  New  Orleans  by  a  confederate  mob  by  holding  corre 
spondence  with  its  leaders,  denouncing  the  exercise  of  the  right 
of  a  political  convention  to  assemble  peacefully  in  that  city  as 
an  act  of  treason  proper  to  be  suppressed  by  violence,  and  com- 


68O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

manding  the  military  to  assist,  instead  of  preventing,  the  execu 
tion  of  the  avowed  purpose  of  dispersing  them. 

"For  this,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  in  view  of  the  wrong 
and  outrage  and  the  cry  of  suffering  that  have  come  up  to  us 
upon  every  southern  breeze,  that  he  had  in  effect  reopened  the 
war,  inaugurated  anarchy,  turned  loose  once  more  the  incarnate 
devil  of  baffled  treason  and  unappeasable  hate,  whom,  as  we 
fondly  thought,  our  victories  had  overthrown  and  bound  in 
chains,  ordained  rapine  and  murder  from  the  Potomac  to  the 
Gulf,  and  deluged  the  streets  of  Memphis  as  well  as  of  New 
Orleans,  and  the  green  fields  of  the  South,  already  dotted  with 
so  many  patriot  graves,  with  the  blood  of  martyred  citizens. 

"And  because  for  all  he  has  not  been  called  to  render  an 
account,  for  the  reasons  that  have  been  already  named,  it  is  now 
assumed  and  argued  by  his  counsel  that  he  stands  acquitted  by 
a  judgment  which  disapproves  its  truth,  although  it  rests  for 
the  most  part  on  record  evidence,  importing  that  'absolute 
verity'  which  is,  of  course,  not  open  to  dispute.  This  extraordi 
nary  assumption  is  but  another  instance  of  that  incorrigible 
blindness  on  the  part  of  the  President  in  regard  to  the  feelings 
and  motives  of  Congress  that  has  helped  to  hurry  him  into  his 
present  humiliating  predicament  as  a  criminal  at  your  bar. 

"But  all  these  things  were  not  enough.  It  wanted  one  drop 
more  to  make  the  cup  of  forbearance  overflow — one  other  act 
that  should  reach  the  sensorium  of  the  nation,  and  make  even 
those  who  might  be  slow  to  comprehend  a  principle,  to  under 
stand  that  further  forbearance  was  ruin  to  us  all;  and  that  act 
was  done  in  the  attempt  to  seize  by  force  or  stratagem  on  that 
Department  of  the  Government  through  which  its  armies  were 
controlled.  It  was  but  a  logical  sequence  of  what  had  gone 
before — the  last  of  a  series  of  usurpations,  all  looking  to  the 
same  great  object.  It  did  not  rise,  perhaps,  beyond  the  height 
of  many  of  the  crimes  by  which  it  was  ushered  in.  But  its  mean 
ing  could  not  be  mistaken.  It  was  an  act  that  smote  upon  the 
nerve  of  the  nation  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  it  impossible  that 
it  could  be  either  concealed,  disparaged,  or  excused,  as  were  the 
muffled  blows  of  the  pick-ax  that  had  been  so  long  silently 
undermining  the  bastions  of  the  Republic.  It  has  been  heard 
and  felt  through  all  our  wide  domain  like  the  reverberation  of 
the  guns  that  opened  their  iron  throats  upon  our  flag  at  Sumter ; 
and  it  has  stirred  the  loyal  heart  of  the  people  again  with  the 
electric  power  that  lifted  it  to  the  height  of  the  sublimest  issue 
that  ever  led  a  martyr  to  the  stake  or  a  patriot  to  the  battle 
field.  That  people  is  here  to-day,  through  its  Representatives 
on  your  floor  and  in  your  galleries,  in  the  persons  alike  of  the  vet- 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         68l 

erans  who  have  been  scarred  by  the  iron  hail  of  battle,  and  of  the 
mothers  and  wives  and  daughters  of  those  who  have  died  that 
the  Republic  might  live,  as  well  as  of  the  commissioned  expo 
nents  of  the  public  will,  to  demand  the  rewards  of  their  sacri 
fices  and  the  consummation  of  their  triumph  in  the  award  of  a 
nation's  justice  upon  this  high  offender. 

"And  now  as  to  the  immediate  issue,  which  I  propose  to 
discuss  only  in  its  constitutional  and  legal  aspects. 

'The  great  crime  of  Andrew  Johnson,  as  already  remarked, 
running  through  all  his  administration,  is  that  he  has  violated 
his  oath  of  office  and  his  constitutional  duties  by  the  obstruction 
and  infraction  of  the  Constitution  and  the  laws,  and  an  endeavor 
to  set  up  his  own  will  against  that  of  the  law-making  power, 
with  a  view  to  a  settled  and  persistent  purpose  of  forcing  the 
rebel  States  into  Congress  on  his  own  terms,  in  the  interests  of 
the  traitors,  and  in  defiance  of  the  will  of  the  loyal  people  of 
the  United  States. 

"The  specific  offenses  charged  here,  which  are  but  the  cul 
minating  facts,  and  only  the  last  of  a  long  series  of  usurpations, 
are  an  unlawful  attempt  to  remove  the  rightful  Secretary  of 
War  and  to  substitute  in  his  place  a  creature  of  his  own,  without 
the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  although  then  in  session; 
a  conspiracy  to  hinder  and  prevent  him  from  resuming  or  hold 
ing  the  said  office  after  the  refusal  of  the  Senate  to  concur  in  his 
suspension,  and  to  seize,  take,  and  possess  the  property  of  the 
United  States  in  said  Department;  an  attempt  to  debauch  an 
officer  of  the  Army  from  his  allegiance  by  inculcating  insubordi 
nation  to  the  law  in  furtherance  of  the  same  object;  the  attempt 
to  set  aside  the  rightful  authority  of  Congress  and  to  bring  it 
into  public  odium  and  contempt,  and  to  encourage  resistance  to 
its  laws  by  the  open  and  public  delivery  of  indecent  harangues, 
impeaching  its  acts  and  purposes  and  full  of  threats  and 
menaces  against  it  and  the  laws  enacted  by  it,  to  the  great 
scandal  and  degradation  of  his  own  high  office  as  President ;  and 
the  devising  and  contriving  of  unlawful  means  to  prevent  the 
execution  of  the  tenure-of-office,  Army  appropriation,  and 
reconstruction  acts  of  March  2,  1867. 

"To  all  of  these  which  relate  to  the  attempted  removal  of 
the  Secretary  of  War  the  answer  is: 

"i.  That  the  case  of  Mr.  Stanton  is  not  within  the  meaning 
of  the  first  section  of  the  tenure-of-office  act. 

"Second.  That  if  it  be,  the  act  is  unconstitutional  and  void 
so  far  as  it  undertakes  to  abridge  the  power  claimed  by  him  of 
'removing  at  any  and  all  times  all  executive  officers  for  causes 


682  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

to  be  judged  of  by  himself  alone/  as  well  as  of  suspending  them 
indefinitely  at  his  sovereign  will  and  pleasure ;  and, 

"Third,  That  whether  the  act  be  constitutional  or  otherwise, 
it  was  his  right,  as  he  claims  it  to  have  been  his  purpose,  to 
disobey  and  violate  it  with  a  view  to  the  settlement  of  the  ques 
tion  of  its  validity  by  the  judiciary  of  the  United  States. 

"And  first,  as  to  the  question  whether  the  present  Secretary 
of  War  was  intended  to  be  comprehended  within  the  first  sec 
tion  of  the  act  referred  to. 

"The  defendant  insists  that  he  was  not,  for  the  reason  that 
he  derived  his  commission  from  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  not  being 
removed  on  his  accession,  continued  by  reason  thereof  to  hold 
the  office  and  administer  its  duties  at  his  pleaure  only,  without 
having  at  any  time  received  any  appointment  from  himself; 
assuming,  as  I  understand,  either  that  under  the  proviso  to 
the  first  section  of  this  act  the  case  was  not  provided  for,  or  that 
by  force  of  its  express  language,  his  office  was  determined  by 
the  expiration  of  the  first  term  of  the  President  who  appointed 
him. 

"The  body,  or  enacting  clause  of  this  section,  provides  that 
every  person  then  holding  any  civil  office  who  had  been  appointed 
thereto  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  or 
who  should  be  thereafter  appointed  to  any  such  office,  should  be 
entitled  to  hold  until  a  successor  is  appointed  in  the  like  manner. 

"It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  its  general  object  was  to  provide 
for  all  cases,,  either  then  existing  or  to  happen  in  the  future. 

"It  is  objected,  however,  that  so  much  of  this  clause  as 
refers  to  the  heads  of  Departments  is  substantially  repealed  by 
the  saving  clause,  which  is  in  the  following  words : 

"  'Provided,  That  the  Secretaries  of  State,  of  the  Treasury,  of 
War,  of  the  Navy,  and  of  the  Interior,  the  Postmaster  General, 
and  the  Attorney  General,  shall  hold  their  offices  respectively  for 
and  during  the  term  of  the  President  by  whom  they  may  have  been 
appointed,  and  for  one  month  thereafter,  subject  to  removal  by 
and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate.' 

"This  proviso  was  the  result  of  a  conference  on  the  dis 
agreeing  votes  on  the  amendment  of  the  House  striking  out  the 
exception  in  favor  of  the  heads  of  Departments,  and  was  sug 
gested — if  he  may  be  excused  the  egotism — by  the  individual 
who  now  addresses  you,  and  to  whom,  as  the  mover  and  advocate 
of  the  amendment,  was  very  naturally  assigned  the  duty  of  con 
ducting  the  negotiation  on  the  part  of  the  House,  for  the  pur 
pose  of  obviating  the  objection  taken  in  debate  on  this  floor  by 
one  of  the  Senate  managers,  that  the  effect  of  the  amendment 


\V  1 1, 1, 1  AM    M.   KVARTS 

Halftone  of  a  contemporary  photograph  by  Urady,  negative  in  possession 
of  I,.  C.  Handy,  Washington,  D.  C. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         683 

would  be  to  impose  on  an  incoming  President  a  Cabinet  that  was 
not  of  his  own  selection.  I  may  be  excused  for  speaking  of  its 
actual  history,  because  that  has  been  made  the  subject  of  com 
ment  by  the  learned  counsel  who  opened  this  case  in  behalf  of 
the  President.  If  it  was  intended  or  expected  that  it  should  so 
operate  as  to  create  exceptions  in  favor  of  an  officer  whose 
notorious  abuse  of  power  was  the  proximate  cause,  if  not  the 
impelling  motive  for  the  enactment  of  the  law,  I  did  not  know  it. 
It  will  be  judged,  however,  by  itself,  without  reference  either 
to  the  particular  intent  of  him  who  may  have  penned  it,  or  to 
any  hasty  opinion  that  may  have  been  expressed  in  either  House 
as  to  the  construction  of  which  it  might  be  possibly  susceptible. 

"The  argument  of  the  defendant  rests  upon  the  meaning  of 
the  word  'appointed.'  That  word  has  both  a  technical  and  a 
popular  one.  In  the  former,  which  involves  the  idea  of  a  nomi 
nation  and  confirmation  in  the  constitutional  way,  there  was  no 
appointment  certainly  by  Mr.  Johnson.  In  the  latter,  which  is 
the  sense  in  which  the  people  will  read  it,  there  unquestionably 
was.  What,  then,  was  meant  by  the  employment  of  this  word? 

"It  is  a  sound  and  well-accepted  rule  in  all  the  courts,  in 
exploring  the  meaning  of  the  law-giver,  especially  in  cases  of 
remedial  statutes,  as  I  think  this  is,  if  it  is  not  rather  to  be 
considered  as  only  a  declaratory  one  in  this  particular,  to  look 
to  the  old  law,  the  mischief  and  the  remedy,  and  to  give  a  liberal 
construction  to  the  language  in  favorem  libertatis,  in  order  to 
repress  the  mischief  and  advance  the  remedy;  taking  the  words 
used  in  their  ordinary  and  familiar  sense,  and  varying  the 
meaning  as  the  intent,  which  is  always  the  polar  star,  may 
require.  Testing  the  case  by  this  rule  what  is  to  be  the  con 
struction  here? 

"The  old  law  was — not  the  Constitution — but  a  vicious 
practice  that  had  grown  out  of  a  precedent  involving  an  early 
and  erroneous  construction  of  that  instrument,  if  it  was  intended 
so  to  operate.  The  mischief  was  that  this  practice  had  rendered 
the  officers  of  the  Government,  and  among  them  the  heads  of 
Departments,  the  most  powerful  and  dangerous  of  them  all, 
from  their  assumed  position  of  advisers  of  the  President,  by 
the  very  dependency  of  their  tenure,  the  mere  ministers  of  his 
pleasure,  and  the  slaves  of  his  imperial  will,  that  could  at  any 
moment,  and  as  the  reward  of  an  honest  and  independent 
opinion,  strip  them  of  their  employments,  and  send  them  back 
into  the  ranks  of  the  people.  The  remedy  was  to  change  them 
from  minions  and  flatterers  into  men,  by  making  them  free,  and 
to  secure  their  loyalty  to  the  law  by  protecting  them  from  the 
power  that  might  constrain  their  assent  to  its  violation.  To 


684  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

accomplish  this  object  it  was  necessary  that  the  law  should  cover 
all  of  them,  high  and  low,  present  and  prospective.  That  it 
could  have  been  intended  to  except  the  most  important  and 
formidable  of  these  functionaries,  either  with  a  view  to  favor 
the  present  Executive,  or  for  the  purpose  of  subjecting  the 
only  head  of  a  Department  who  had  the  confidence  of  Congress 
to  his  arbitrary  will,  is  as  unreasonable  and  improbable,  as  it  is 
at  variance  with  the  truth  of  the  fact  and  with  the  obvious 
general  purposes  of  the  act. 

''For  the  President  of  the  United  States  to  say,  however,  now, 
after  having  voluntarily  retained  Mr.  Stanton  for  more  than  two 
years  of  his  administration,  that  he  was  there  only  by  sufferance, 
or  as  a  mere  movable,  or  heirloom,  or  incumbrance  that  had 
passed  to  him  with  the  estate,  and  not  by  virtue  of  his  own 
special  appointment,  if  not  'paltering  with  the  people  in  a 
double  sense/  has  very  much  the  appearance  of  a  not  very 
respectable  quibble.  The  unlearned  man  who  reads  the  proviso 
— as  they  for  whose  perusal  it  is  intended  will  read  it — and 
who  is  not  accustomed  to  handle  the  metaphysic  scissors  of  the 
professional  casuists  who  are  able  'to  divide  a  hair  'twixt  north 
and  northwest  side/  while  he  admits  the  ingenuity  of  the  advo 
cate,  will  stand  amazed,  if  he  does  not  scorn  the  officer  who 
would  stoop  to  the  use  of  such  a  subterfuge. 

"Assuming,  however,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  the 
technical  sense  is  to  prevail,  what  is  to  be  its  effect?  Why  only 
to  make  the  law-giver  enact  a  very  unreasonable  and  impossible 
thing,  by  providing  in  words  of  the  future  tense,  that  the  com 
mission  of  the  officer  shall  expire  nearly  two  years  before  the 
passage  of  the  law,  which  is  a  construction  that  the  general  rule 
of  law  forbids !  To  test  this  let  us  substitute  for  the  general 
denominational  phrases  of  'Secretary  of  War,  of  State,  and  of  the 
Navy/  the  names  of  Messrs.  Seward,  Stanton,  and  Welles,  and 
for  that  of  the  President  who  appointed  them,  the  name  of 
Lincoln,  and  the  clause  will  read:  'Provided,  That  Messrs. 
Seward,  Stanton,  and  Welles,  shall  hold  their  offices  respectively 
for  and  during  the  term  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  for  one  month 
thereafter/  The  effect  will  then  be  to  put  you  in  the  position 
of  having  enacted  not  only  an  absurdity,  but  an  impossibility. 
But  on  this  there  are  at  least  two  rules  of  interpretation  that 
start  up  in  the  way  of  the  solution.  The  first  is  that  it  is  not 
respectful  to  the  Legislature  to  presume  that  it  ever  intended  to 
enact  an  absurdity,  if  the  case  is  susceptible  of  any  other  con 
struction;  and  the  second  that — 

"  'Acts  of  Parliament  that  are  impossible  to  be  performed  are 
of  no  validity;  and  if  there  arise  out  of  them  collaterally  any  absurd 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         685 

consequences  manifestly  contradictory  to  common  reason,  they  are, 
with  regard  to  these  collateral  consequences,  void/ — I  Black- 
stone's  Commentaries,  91. 

"If  the  effect  of  the  proviso,  however,  upon  something 
analogous  to  the  doctrine  of  cy  pres,  or,  in  other  words,  of 
getting  as  near  to  its  meaning  as  possible,  was  to  determine  the 
office  at  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  law,  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  retention  of  the  officer  by  the  President  for  five  months 
afterward,  and  through  an  intervening  Congress,  without  a 
commission  or  even  a  nomination,  was  a  breach  of  the  law,  and 
therefore  a  misdemeanor  in  itself;  which  he  could  hardly  plead, 
and  would  scarcely  ask  you  to  affirm,  against  the  general  pre 
sumption  of  the  faithful  performance  of  official  duty  for  the 
purpose  of  sheltering  him  from  the  consequences  of  still  another 
violation  of  the  law. 

"Assuming  again,  however,  that,  as  is  claimed  by  the 
defense,  the  case  of  Mr.  Stanton  does  not  fall  within  the  proviso, 
what,  then,  is  the  result?  Is  it  the  predicament  of  a  casus 
omissus  altogether?  Is  he  to  be  hung  up,  like  Mahomet's  coffin, 
between  the  body  of  the  act  and  the  proviso,  the  latter  nullifying 
the  former  on  the  pretext  of  an  exception,  and  then  repudiating 
fhe  exception  itself  as  to  the  particular  case;  or  is  the  obvious 
and  indisputable  purpose  of  providing  for  all  cases  whatever,  to 
be  carried  out  by  falling  back  on  the  general  enacting  clause 
which  would  make  him  irremovable  by  the  President  alone,  and 
leaving  him  outside  of  the  provision  as  to  tenure,  which  was  the 
sole  object  of  the  exception?  There  is  nothing  in  the  saving 
clause  which  is  at  all  inconsistent  with  what  goes  before.  The 
provision  that  takes  every  officer  out  of  the  power  of  the  President 
is  not  departed  from  in  that  clause.  Ail  it  enacts  is  that  the 
tenure  shall  be  a  determinate  one  in  cases  that  fall  within  it. 
If  Mr.  Stanton  was  appointed  by  President  Johnson  within  the 
meaning  of  the  proviso,  he  holds,  of  course,  until  the  expiration 
of  his  term.  If  not,  he  holds  subject  to  removal  like  other 
officers  under  the  enacting  clause.  It  has  been  so  often  asserted 
publicly  as  to  have  become  a  generally  accredited  truth,  that  the 
special  purpose  of  the  act  was  to  protect  him.  I  do  not  affirm 
this,  and  do  not  consider  it  necessary  that  I  should,  or  important 
to  the  case  whether  he  favored  the  passage  of  the  law  or  not. 
It  will  be  hardly  pretended,  however,  by  anybody,  that  he  was 
intended  to  be  excluded  entirely  from  its  operation. 

"Nor  is  the  case  helped  by  the  reference  to  the  fourth  sec 
tion  of  the  act,  which  provides  that  nothing  therein  contained 
shall  be  construed  to  extend  the  term  of  any  office  the  duration 
of  which  is  limited  by  law.  The  office  in  question  was  one  of 


686  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

those  of  which  the  tenure  was  indefinite.  The  construction 
insisted  on  by  me  does  not  extend  it.  The  only  effect  is  to  take 
away  the  power  of  removal  from  the  President  alone  and 
restore  it  to  the  parties  by  whom  the  Constitution  intended  that 
it  should  be  exercised. 

"Assuming,  then,  that  the  case  of  Mr.  Stanton  is  within 
the  law,  the  next  question  is  as  to  the  validity  of  the  law  itself. 
And  here  we  are  met,  for  the  first  time  in  our  history  as  a  nation, 
by  the  assertion,  on  the  part  of  the  President,  of  the  illimitable 
and  uncontrollable  power  under  the  Constitution,  in  accordance, 
as  he  insists,  with  the  judicial  opinion,  the  professional  senti 
ment,  and  the  settled  practice  under  the  Government  of  remov 
ing  at  any  and  all  times  all  executive  officers  whatever,  without 
responsibility  to  anybody,  and  as  included  therein  the  equally 
uncontrollable  power  of  suspending  them  indefinitely  and  sup 
plying  their  places  from  time  to  time  by  appointments  made  by 
himself  ad  interim.  If  there  be  any  case  where  the  claim  has 
heretofore  extended,  even  in  theory,  beyond  the  mere  power  to 
create  a  vacancy  by  removal  during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,  I 
do  not  know  it.  If  there  be  any  wherein  the  power  to  suspend 
indefinitely,  which  goes  even  beyond  this,  has  been  asserted,  it 
is  equally  new  to  me.  This  truly  regal  pretension  has  been  fitly 
reserved  for  the  first  President  who  has  ever  claimed  the 
imperial  prerogative  of  founding  governments  by  proclamation, 
of  taxing  without  a  Congress,  of  disposing  of  the  public  property 
by  millions  at  his  own  will,  and  of  exercising  a  dispensing  power 
over  the  laws.  It  is  but  a  logical  sequence  of  what  he  has  been 
already  permitted  to  do  with  absolute  impunity  and  almost  with 
out  complaint.  If  he  could  be  tolerated  thus  far,  why  not 
consummate  the  work  which  was  to  render  him  supreme,  and 
crown  his  victory  over  the  legislative  power  by  setting  this  body 
aside  as  an  advisory  council,  and  claiming  himself  to  be  the 
rightful  interpreter  of  the  laws?  The  defense  made  here  is  a 
defiance,  a  challenge  to  the  Senate  and  the  nation,  that  must  be 
met  and  answered  just  now  in  such  a  way  as  shall  determine 
which,  if  any,  is  to  be  to  the  master.  If  the  claim  asserted  is  to 
be  maintained  by  your  decision,  all  that  will  remain  for  you  will 
be  only  the  formal  abdication  of  your  high  trust  as  part  of  the 
appointing  power,  because  there  will  be  then  absolutely  nothing 
left  of  it  that  is  worth  preserving. 

"But  let  us  see  what  there  is  in  the  Constitution  to  warrant 
these  extravagant  pretensions,  or  to  prevent  the  passage  of  a 
law  to  restore  the  practice  of  this  Government  to  the  true  theory 
of  that  instrument. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         687 

"I  do  not  propose  to  weary  you  with  a  protracted  examina 
tion  of  this  question.  I  could  not  add  to  what  I  have  already 
said  on  the  same  subject  in  the  discussion  in  the  House  of  the 
bill  relating  to  removals  from  office  in  December,  1866,  to  which 
I  wrould  have  ventured  to  invite  your  attention,  if  the  same  point 
had  not  been  so  fully  elaborated  here.  You  have  already  passed 
upon  it  in  the  enactment  of  the  present  law  by  a  vote  so  decisive 
and  overwhelming,  and  there  is  so  little  objection  on  the  part 
of  the  counsel  for  the  President  to  the  validity  of  that  law,  that 
I  may  content  myself  with  condensing  the  arguments  on  both 
sides  into  a  few  general  propositions  which  will  comprehend 
their  capital  features. 

"The  case  may  be  stated,  as  I  think,  analytically  and 
synoptically  thus : 

''The  first  fact  to  be  observed  is,  that  while  the  Constitu 
tion  enumerates  sundry  offices,  and  provides  the  manner  of 
appointment  in  those  cases,  as  well  as  in  'all  others  to  be  created 
by  law,'  it  prescribes  no  tenure  except  that  of  good  behavior  in 
the  case  of  the  judges,  and  is  entirely  silent  on  the  subject  of 
removal  by  any  other  process  than  that  of  impeachment. 

"From  this  the  inferences  are : 

"i.  That  the  tenure  of  good  behavior,  being  substantially 
equivalent  to  that  for  life,  the  office  must  in  all  other  cases  be 
determinable  at  the  will  of  some  department  of  the  Government, 
unless  limited  by  law;  which  is,  however,  but  another  name  for 
the  will  of  the  law-maker  himself.  And  this  is  settled  by 
authority. 

"2.  That  the  power  of  removal  at  will,  being  an  implied 
one  only,  is  to  be  confined  to  those  cases  where  the  tenure  is  not 
ascertained  by  law ;  the  right  of  removal  in  any  other  form  than 
by  the  process  of  impeachment  depending  entirely  on  the 
hypothesis  of  a  will  of  which  the  essential  condition  always  is 
that  it  is  free  to  act  without  reason  and  without  responsibility. 

"3.  That  the  power  of  removal,  being  implied  as  a  necessity 
of  state  to  secure  the  dependence  of  the  officer  on  the  Govern 
ment,  is  not  to  be  extended  by  construction  so  as  to  take  him 
out  of  the  control  of  the  Legislature,  and  make  him  dependent  on 
the  will  of  the  Executive. 

"The  next  point  is  that  the  President  is  by  the  terms  of  the 
Constitution  to  'nominate,  and  by  and  with  the  advice  and  con 
sent  of  the  Senate  appoint/  to  all  offices,  and  that  without  this 
concurrence  he  appoints  to  none  except  when  authorized  by 
Congress.  And  this  may  be  described  as  the  rule  of  the  Con 
stitution. 

"The  exceptions  are : 


688  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"i.  That  in  the  cases  of  inferior  offices  the  Congress  may 
lodge  this  power  with  the  President  alone  or  with  the  courts 
or  the  heads  of  Departments ;  and 

"2.  That  in  cases  of  vacancy  happening  during  the  recess 
of  the  Senate  he  may — not  appoint — but  fill  them  up  by  grant 
ing  commissions  to  expire  at  the  end  of  the  next  session  of  that 
body. 

"From  which  it  appears — 

"i.  That  the  President  cannot,  as  already  stated,  in  any 
case,  appoint  alone  without  the  express  authority  of  Congress, 
and  then  only  in  the  case  of  inferior  offices. 

"2.  That  the  power  to  supply  even  an  accidental  vacancy 
was  only  to  continue  until  the  Senate  was  in  a  condition  to  be 
consulted  and  to  advise  and  act  upon  the  case ;  and 

"3.  As  a  corollary  from  these  two  propositions,  that  if  the 
power  to  remove  in  cases  where  the  tenure  is  indefinite  be,  as  it 
is  solemnly  conceded  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
in  re  Heenan  (13  Peters)  an  incident  to  the  power  to  appoint, 
it  belongs  to  the  President  and  Senate,  and  not  to  the  President 
alone,  as  it  was  held  in  that  case  to  be  in  the  judge  who  made 
the  appointment. 

"The  argument  upon  which  this  implied  and  merely  infer 
ential  power,  not  of  'filling  up,'  but  of  making  a  vacancy  during 
the  recess — which  is  now  claimed  to  extend  to  the  making  of  a 
vacancy  at  any  time — has  been  defended,  is — 

"First.  The  possible  necessity  for  the  exercise  of  such 
a  power  during  the  recess  of  the  Senate,  or,  in  other  words,  the 
argument  ab  inconvenienti. 

"Second.  That  the  power  of  removal  is  a  purely  executive 
function,  which,  passed  by  the  general  grant  in  the  first  section 
of  the  second  article  of  the  Constitution,  would  have  carried  the 
power  to  appoint,  if  unprovided  for,  and  is  to  be  considered  in 
him  in  all  cases  wherein  it  has  not  been  expressly  denied  or 
lodged  in  other  hands;  while  the  association  of  the  Senate,  the 
same  not  being  an  executive  body,  is  an  exception  to  the  general 
principle,  and  must  be  taken  strictly  so  as  not  to  extend  thereto. 

"Third.  That  it  is  essential  to  the  President  as  the  responsi 
ble  head  of  the  Government,  charged  by  his  oath  with  the  execu 
tion  of  the  laws,  that  he  should  control  his  own  subordinates,  by 
making  their  tenure  of  office  to  depend  upon  his  will,  so  as  to 
make  a  unit  of  the  Administration. 

"The  answer  to  the  first  of  these  propositions  is  that  there 
is  no  necessity  for  the  exercise  of  the  power  during  the  recess, 
because  the  case  supposed  may  be  provided  for  by  Congress — 
as  it  has  been  by  the  act  now  in  question — under  its  express 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         689 

constitutional  authority  'to  make  all  laws  which  shall  be  neces 
sary  or  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  all  powers  vested  in 
the  Government,  or  in  any  Department  thereof/  a  power  which, 
by  the  way,  is  very  strangely  claimed  by  one  of  the  President's 
counsel  to  be  an  implied  one. 

"To  the  second  the  answer  is  that  whether  an  executive 
power  or  not  depends  on  the  structure  of  the  Government,  or, 
in  other  words,  on  what  the  Constitution  makes  it;  that  the 
clause  in  question  is  but  a  distributive  one ;  that  if  all  executive 
power  is  in  the  President,  then  by  parity  of  reason  all  legislative 
power  is  in  Congress  without  reference  to  the  Constitution;  that 
the  Senate  is  not  only  associated  with  the  President  in  the  gen 
eral  appointing  power,  but  that  the  power  itself  may  be  with 
drawn  by  Congress  almost  entirely  from  both,  under  the  pro 
vision  in  regard  to  inferior  offices,  which  would  involve  a  repug 
nancy  to  the  general  grant  relied  on,  if  the  power  be  an  executive 
one;  that  if  no  provision  had  been  made  for  appointment  in  the 
Constitution  the  power  to  supply  the  omission  would  have 
resulted  to  the  law-maker  under  the  authority  just  quoted,  to 
make  'all  laws  that  might  be  necessary  or  proper  for  carrying 
into  execution  all  powers  vested  in  the  Government  or  any 
department  thereof/  which  carries  with  it  the  power  to  create 
all  offices;  and  that,  moreover,  this  power  of  removal,  in  the 
only  case  wherein  it  is  referred  to,  is  made  a  judicial  one. 

"To  the  third  the  answer  is — 

"i.  That  however  natural  it  may  be  for  the  President,  after 
an  unchecked  career  of  usurpation  for  three  long  years,  during 
which  he  has  used  his  subordinates  generally  as  the  slavish 
ministers  of  his  will,  and  dealt  with  the  affairs  of  this  nation 
as  if  he  had  been  its  master  also  as  well  as  theirs,  he  greatly 
mistakes  and  magnifies  his  office,  as  has  been  already  shown  in 
the  fact  that  under  the  Constitution  he  may  be  stripped  at  any 
time  by  Congress  of  nearly  the  whole  of  the  appointing  power; 
and, 

"2.  That  the  responsibility  of  the  President  is  to  be  gradu 
ated  by,  and  can  only  be  commensurate  with,  the  power  that  is 
assigned  to  him;  that  the  obligation  imposed  on  him  is  to  take 
care  that  the  laws  are  faithfully  executed,  and  not  his  will, 
which  is  so  strangely  assumed  to  be  the  only  law  of  the  exalted 
functionaries  who  surround  him;  and  that  it  is  not  only  not 
essential  to  the  performance  of  their  duty  under  the  law  that 
the  heads  of  Departments  should  be  the  mere  passive  instruments 
of  his  will,  but  the  very  contrary. 

"Upon  this  brief  statement  of  the  argument  it  would  seem  as 
if  there  could  be  no  reasonable  doubt  as  to  the  meaning  of  the 


690  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

Constitution.  But  the  high  delinquent  who  is  now  on  trial, 
feeling  that  he  cannot  safely  rest  his  case  here,  and  shrinking 
from  the  inexorable  logic  that  rules  it  against  him,  takes  refuge 
in  the  past,  and  claims  to  have  found  a  new  Constitution  that 
suits  him  better  than  the  old  one,  in  the  judicial  authorities,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  commentators,  in  the  enlightened  professional 
and  public  sentiment  of  the  nation,  and  in  a  legislative  practice 
and  construction  that  are  coeval  with  the  Government,  and  have 
continued  without  interruption  until  the  present  time.  A  little 
inquiry,  however,  will  show  that  there  is  no  altar  or  sanctuary, 
no  city  of  refuge  here,  to  shelter  the  greatest  of  the  nation's 
malefactors  from  the  just  vengeance  of  a  betrayed  and  indignant 
people. 

"And  first,  as  to  judicial  authority.  There  are  but  three 
cases,  I  think,  wherein  these  questions  have  ever  come  up  for 
adjudication  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
and  in  all  of  them  the  decisions  have  been  directly  in  conflict 
with  the  theory  and  pretensions  of  the  President. 

"The  first  was  the  familiar  one  of  Marbury  vs.  Madison,  I 
Cranch,  256,  made  doubly  memorable  by  the  fact  that  it  arose 
out  of  one  of  the  so-called  midnight  appointments  made  by  the 
elder  Adams — the  same,  by  the  way,  whose  casting  vote  as  an 
executive  officer  turned  the  scale  in  favor  of  the  power  to  which 
he  was  destined  to  succeed  in  the  First  Congress  of  1/89,  on 
the  eve  of  his  retirement — under  a  law  which  had  been  approved 
only  the  day  before,  authorizing  the  appointment  of  five  justices 
of  the  peace  for  the  District  of  Columbia,  to  serve  respectively 
for  the  term  of  five  years.  The  commission  in  question  had 
been  duly  signed  and  registered,  but  was  withheld  by  his  succes 
sor  (Jefferson)  on  the  ground  that  the  act  was  incomplete  with 
out  a  delivery.  It  was  not  claimed  by  him  that  the  appointment 
was  revocable  if  once  consummated.  If  it  had  been,  the  resist 
ance  would  have  been  unnecessary,  and  the  assertion  of  the  right 
to  the  office  an  idle  one.  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  in  delivering 
the  opinion  of  the  court,  holds  this  language : 

"  'Where  an  officer  is  removable  at  the  will  of  the  Executive, 
the  circumstance  which  completed  his  appointment  is  of  no  con 
sequence,  because  the  act  is  at  any  time  revocable.  But  where  the 
officer  is  not  removable  at  the  will  of  the  Executive,  the  appoint 
ment  is  not  revocable  and  cannot  be  annulled.  Having  once  made 
the  appointment  his  power  over  the  office  is  terminated  in  all  cases 
where  by  law  the  officer  is  not  removable  by  him.  Then,  as  the 
law  creating  the  office  gave  the  right  to  hold  for  five  years  inde 
pendent  of  the  Executive,  the  appointment  was  not  revocable,  but 
vested  in  the  officer  legal  rights  that  are  protected  by  the  laws 
of  his  country.' 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  69! 

"The  point  ruled  here  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  involved 
in  the  tenure-of-office  act,  to  wit:  that  Congress  may  define  the 
tenure  of  any  office  it  creates,  and  that  once  fixed  by  law  it  is  no 
longer  determinable  at  the  will  of  anybody — the  act  being  a 
mere  substitution  of  the  will  of  the  nation  for  that  of  the  Execu 
tive,  by  giving  that  will  the  form  of  law,  which  is,  indeed,  the 
only  form  that  is  consistently  admissible  in  a  government  of 
law.  The  present  Executive  insists — as  Jefferson  did  not — that 
he  has  the  power  under  the  Constitution  to  remove  or  suspend 
at  any  and  all  times  any  executive  officer  whatever  for  causes 
to  be  judged  of  by  himself  alone;  and  that,  in  the  opinion  of  his 
advisers,  this  power  cannot  be  lawfully  restrained ;  which  is  in 
effect  to  claim  the  power  to  appoint  without  the  advice  and  con 
sent  of  the  Senate,  as  he  has  just  now  done,  as  well  as  to 
remove. 

"The  next  case  in  order  is  that  of  ex  parte  Heenan,  reported 
in  13  Peters,  which  involved  a  question  as  to  the  right  of  the 
judge  of  the  district  court  of  Louisiana  to  remove,  at  his  dis 
cretion,  a  clerk  appointed  by  him  indefinitely  under  the  law. 
The  court  say  there — Thompson,  Justice,  delivering  the  opinion 
— that— 

"  'All  offices,  the  tenure  of  which  is  not  fixed  by  the  Constitu 
tion  or  limited  by  law,  must  be  held  either  during  good  behavior 
or  at  the  will  and  discretion  of  some  department  of  the  Government, 
and  subject  to  removal  at  pleasure.' 

"And  again  that — 

''  'In  the  absence  of  all  constitutional  provisions  or  statutory 
regulation  it  would  seem  to  be  a  sound  and  necessary  rule  to  con 
sider  the  power  of  removal  as  an  incident  to  the  power  to  appoint.' 

"They  add,  however — 

"  'But  it  was  very  early  adopted  as  the  practical  construction 
that  the  power  was  vested  in  the  President  alone,  and  that  such 
would  appear  to  have  been  the  legislative  construction,  because  in 
establishing  the  three  principal  Departments  of  State,  War,  and 
Treasury,  they  recognized  the  power  of  removal  in  the  President, 
although  by  the  act  of  1798,  establishing  the  Navy  Department, 
the  reference  was  not  by  name  to  him.' 

"The  result  was  that  upon  the  principles  this  enunciated, 
involving  the  exception  as  to  cases  where  the  tenure  was 
limited  by  law,  as  laid  down  in  Marbury  vs.  Madison,  they 
declared  the  power  of  removal  to  have  been  well  exercised  by 


692  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  judge  who  made  the  appointment  under  the  law,  for  the 
reason  only  that  it  was  an  incident  thereto. 

"It  is  well  worthy  of  remark,  however,  in  this  connection, 
that  although  what  is  thus  gratuitously  said  as  to  the  practical 
construction  in  opposition  to  the  rule  there  recognized  does  not 
conflict  in  any  way  with  the  doctrine  of  Marbury  vs.  Madison, 
it  is  entirely  at  variance,  as  seems  to  be  confessed,  with  the 
decision  itself,  which,  on  the  doctrine  of  Mr.  Madison  in  the 
debate  of  1789,  that  the  power  of  removal  was  a  strictly  execu 
tive  one,  and  passed  by  the  general  grant  of  the  Constitution, 
unless  expressly  denied  or  elsewhere  lodged,  must  have  been 
inevitably  the  other  way,  because  in  that  case  it  must  have 
resulted,  not  to  the  judge,  but  to  the  President.  Whether  a 
mere  permissive,  sub  silentio,  exercise  of  a  power  like  this,  or 
even  a  temporary  surrender  on  grounds  of  personal  confidence 
or  party  favor,  where  it  perhaps  violated  no  constitutional 
interdict,  and  was,  in  point  of  fact,  authorized  as  to  all  but  the 
superior  offices,  can  raise  a  prescription  against  a  constitutional 
right,  or  how  many  laws  it  will  require  to  abrogate  the  funda 
mental  law,  I  will  not  stop  now  to  inquire.  It  is  sufficient  for 
my  purpose  that  the  case  decides  that  the  power  of  removal  is 
but  an  incident  to  the  power  of  appointment,  and  that,  of  course, 
it  can  be  exercised  only  by  the  same  agencies,  as  the  tenure-of- 
office  act  exactly  provides. 

"The  next  and  last  case  is  that  of  the  United  States  ex  rela- 
tione  vs.  Guthrie,  reported  in  17  Howard,  284,  which  was  an 
application  for  a  mandamus  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to 
compel  him  to  pay  the  salary  of  a  territorial  judge  in  Minnesota, 
who  had  been  removed  by  the  President  before  the  expiration  of 
his  term,  which  was  fixed  by  law  at  four  years.  The  case  was 
dismissed  upon  the  doctrine  that  the  proceeding  was  not  a  proper 
one  to  try  the  title  to  an  office,  and  therefore  the  question  of  the 
power  to  remove  was  not  disposed  of  or  discussed,  except  by 
Justice  McLain,  who  dissented  on  the  main  point  and  felt  called 
upon,  of  course,  to  pass  upon  the  other.  I  refer  to  his  opinion 
mainly  for  the  purpose  of  borrowing,  with  a  part  of  the  argu 
ment,  an  important  statement  in  relation  to  the  views  of  the 
bench  that  was  almost  coeval  with  the  Constitution  itself  on  this 
question.  He  says,  on  page  306: 

'  There  was  great  contrariety  of  opinion  in  Congress  on  this 
power.  With  the  experience  we  now  have  in  regard  to  its  exercise 
there  is  great  doubt  whether  the  most  enlightened  statesman  would 
not  come  to  a  different  conclusion.' 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT        693 

'The  power  referred  to  was  that  of  the  removal  by  the 
President  of  the  heads  of  the  principal  Departments  of  the 
Government,  as  conceded  by  the  acts  of  1789. 

"  'The  Attorney  General  calls  this  a  constitutional  power. 
There  is  no  such  power  given  in  the  Constitution.  It  is  presumed 
to  be  in  the  President  from  the  power  of  appointment.  This 
presumption,  I  think,  is  unwise  and  illogical.  The  reasoning  is: 
The  President  and  Senate  appoint  to  office;  therefore  the  President 
may  remove  from  office.  Now,  the  argument  would  be  legitimate  if 
the  power  to  remove  were  inferred  to  be  the  same  that  appoints. 

"  'It  was  supposed  that  the  exercise  of  this  power  by  the 
President  was  necessary  for  the  efficient  discharge  of  executive 
duties;  that  to  consult  the  Senate  in  making  removals  the  same 
as  making  appointments  would  be  too  tardy  for  the  correction  of 
abuses.  By  a  temporary  appointment  the  public  service  is  now  pro 
vided  for  in  case  of  death;  and  the  same  provision  could  be  made 
where  immediate  removals  are  necessary.  The  Senate,  when 
called  upon  to  fill  the  vacancy,  would  pass  upon  the  demerits  of  the 
late  incumbent. 

"  'This,  I  have  never  doubted,  was  the  true  construction  of  the 
Constitution;  and  I  am  able  to  say  it  was  the  opinion  of  the  late 
Supreme  Court  with  Marshall  at  its  head.' 

"And  again: 

"  'If  the  power  to  remove  from  office  may  be  inferred  from 
the  power  to  appoint,  both  the  elements  of  the  appointing  power 
are  necessarily  included.  The  Constitution  has  declared  what  shall 
be  the  executive  power  to  appoint,  and,  by  consequence,  the  same 
power  should  be  exercised  in  a  removal.' 

"It  will  be  said,  perhaps,  that  all  this  is  qualified  by  the 
remark  that  'this  power  of  removal  has  been,  perhaps,  too  long 
established  and  exercised  to  be  now  questioned.'  It  is  enough, 
however,  to  refer  to  the  observation  which  follows,  that  'the 
voluntary  action  of  the  Senate  and  the  President  would  be 
necessary  to  change  the  practice/  to  show  what  was  meant  by 
him.  Such  events  as  our  eyes  have  witnessed,  and  such  a  con 
juncture  of  affairs  following  fast  upon  their  heels  as  would 
leave  the  Executive  with  all  his  formidable  patronage  and  all 
the  prestige  of  his  place,  without  even  the  meager  support  of  a 
third  in  either  House,,  were  scarcely  within  the  range  of  human 
probability.  When  he  remarks,  therefore,  that  it  was  'perhaps 
too  late  to  question  it/  he  means,  of  course,  'to  question  it  suc 
cessfully'  as  the  context  shows.  If  he.  had  meant  otherwise  he 
would  not  have  referred  to  a  voluntary  change  of  practice  as 
operating  a  corresponding  change  of  the  Constitution.  He  was 


694  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

too  good  a  lawyer  and  too  large  a  statesman  to  affirm  that  the 
fundamental  law  of  a  great  State  could  be  wrested  from  its 
true  construction  either  by  the  errors  of  the  Legislature,  or  the 
toleration  of  a  mischievous  practice  and  a  monster  vice  for  less 
than  eighty  years. 

'It  is  apparent,  then,  from  all  the  cases,  that  the  judicial 
opinion,  so  far  from  sustaining  the  view  of  the  President,  settles 
at  least  two  points  which  are  fatal  to  his  pretensions :  first,  that 
Congress  may  so  limit  the  tenure  of  an  office  as  to  render  the 
incumbent  irremovable  except  by  the  process  of  impeachment; 
and  second,  that  the  power  to  remove,  so  far  as  it  exists,  is  but 
an  incident  to  the  power  to  appoint. 

"Nor  is  it  any  answer  to  say,  as  has  been  claimed  in  debate 
on  this  floor,  that  these  were  cases  of  inferior  offices  where, 
under  the  Constitution,  it  was  within  the  power  of  Congress  to 
regulate  them  at  its  discretion.  There  is  nothing  in  the  pro 
vision  as  to  inferior  offices  to  distinguish  them  from  others 
beyond  the  mere  article  of  appointment.  This  is  a  question  of 
tenure,  and  that  is  equally  undefined  as  to  both,  except  in  the 
few  cases  specially  enumerated  therein.  It  was  equally  within 
the  power  of  Congress  to  regulate  in  one  case  as  in  the  other. 
The  right  to  regulate  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  right  to  create. 
When  it  establishes  an  office,  as  it  has  established  the  depart 
mental  bureaus,  by  law,  it  has,  of  necessity,  the  right  to  pre 
scribe  its  duties  and  say  how  long  it  shall  be  held  and  when  it 
shall  determine.  When  it  does  say  so,  it  can  hardly  be  main 
tained  with  any  show  of  reason  that  a  power  which  is  only 
implied  from  the  fact  that  the  tenure  of  office  has  been  left 
indefinite  in  the  Constitution  which  has  vested  the  establishment 
of  offices  in  Congress,  shall  be  held  to  operate  to  defeat  its  will 
and  shorten  the  life  of  its  own  creature  in  cases  where  its 
legislation  is  express. 

"And  so,  too,  as  to  the  doctrine  that  the  power  of  removal 
is  but  an  incident  to  the  power  to  appoint.  That  is  settled  upon 
grounds  of  reason,  as  a  general  principle,  which  has  no  more 
application  to  inferior  offices  than  to  superior  ones.  The  idea 
is  that  the  power  of  removal  wherever  it  exists  is  in  the  very 
nature  of  things  but  part  and  parcel  of  the  power  to  appoint,  and 
that  as  a  consequence  the  power  that  makes,  and  none  other, 
must  unmake;  and  on  this  idea  it  was  ruled  in  the  particular 
case  that  the  power  to  remove  was  in  the  judge,  because  the 
authority  to  appoint  was  there.  It  equally  rules,  however,  that 
where  the  appointment  is  in  the  head  of  a  Department  the 
power  of  removal  belongs  to  him;  that  where  it  is  lodged  by 
Congress  in  the  President  alone  it  is  in  him  only;  and  where 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         695 

it  is  in  the  President  and  Senate  conjointly  there  it  is  in  both; 
which  is  precisely  the  doctrine  maintained  by  the  minority  in  the 
Congress  of  1789.  It  ought  to  be  a  sufficient  answer,  however, 
that  no  such  distinction  was  taken  by  Justice  Thompson  in  the 
Heenan  case,  although  he  referred  to  the  departure  from  this 
rule  in  the  practical  construction  which  had  assigned  the  power 
to  the  President  alone. 

"The  judicial  opinion  having  thus  signally  failed  to  support 
the  dangerous  heresies  of  the  President,  the  next  resort  is  to  that 
of  the  statesmen,  lawyers,  and  publicists  who  have  from  time 
to  time  illustrated  our  history.  And  here,  too,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  great  criminal  who  is  at  your  bar  has  no  better  support 
than  he  has  found  in  higher  quarters. 

"I  am  not  here  to  question  the  doctrine  which  has  been  so 
strongly  urged,  upon  the  authority  of  Lord  Coke,  that  contem 
poraneous  exposition  is  entitled  to  great  weight  in  law.  Taking 
it  to  be  sound,  however,  it  will  hardly  be  pretended,  I  suppose, 
that  there  is  anything  of  this  description  which  will  compare  in 
value  with  the  authoritative,  and  I  might  almost  say,  oracular 
utterances  of  the  Federalist,  which  was  the  main  agent,  under 
Providence,  in  securing  for  the  Constitution  the  support  of  the 
people  of  the  several  States,  and  has  since  occupied  the  rank  of 
a  classic  in  the  political  literature  of  America.  And  yet,  in  the 
seventy-seventh  number  of  that  series,  which  is  ascribed  to  the 
pen  of  Alexander  Hamilton,,  himself  perhaps  'the  first  among 
his  peers'  in  the  Convention  which  framed  that  instrument,,  it  is 
assumed  as  an  unquestionable  proposition  and  that,  too,  in  the 
way  of  answer  to  the  objection  of  instability  arising  from 
frequent  changes  of  administration,  that  inasmuch  'as  the  Senate 
was  to  participate  in  the  business  of  appointments,  its  consent 
would  therefore  be  necessary  to  displace  as  well  as  to  appoint.' 
Nor  was  it  considered  even  necessary  to  reason  out  a  conclusion 
that  was  so  obvious  and  inevitable.  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  supposed  by  anybody  that  a  power  so  eminently  regal  could 
ever  be  raised  in  the  executive  of  a  limited  Government  out  of 
the  mere  fact  of  the  silence  of  the  Constitution  on  that  subject 
and  the  failure  to  provide  any  other  mode  of  removal  than  by 
the  process  of  impeachment.  If  the  conclusion,  however,  was 
not  a  sound  one,,  then  it  was  no  better  than  a  false  pretense, 
which  those  at  least  who  concurred  in  its  presentation  were 
morally  estopped  from  controverting.  And  yet  it  is  one  of  the 
distinguished  authors  of  these  papers,  in  his  quality  of  a  legis 
lator,  that  the  nation  is  mainly  indebted  for  the  vote  which 
inaugurated  and  fastened  so  long  upon  it  the  mischievous  and 
anti-republican  doctrine  and  practice  which  it  has  cost  a  revolu- 


696  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

tion  to  overthrow.  It  does  not  seem,  however,  to  have  effected 
any  change  in  the  opinions  of  the  distinguished  author,  as  we 
find  him  insisting  in  a  letter  written  ten  years  afterward  to 
James  McHenry,  then  Secretary  of  War,  that  even  the  power 
to  fill  vacancies  happening  during  the  recess  of  the  Senate  is  to 
be  confined  to  'such  offices  as  having  been  once  filled  have 
become  vacant  by  accidental  circumstances.' 

"From  the  time  of  the  settlement  of  the  policy  of  the  Gov 
ernment  on  this  subject  by  its  first  Congress  down  till  the  acces 
sion  of  the  younger  Adams  in  1826,  a  period  of  nearly  forty 
years,  the  question  does  not  seem  to  have  been  agitated,  for  the 
very  satisfactory  reason  that  the  patronage  was  so  inconsidera 
ble,  and  the  cases  of  abuse  so  rare,  as  to  attract  no  attention  on 
the  part  of  public  men.  In  the  last  named  year,  however, 
a  committee  was  raised  by  the  Senate,  headed  by  Mr.  Benton, 
and  composed  of  nine  of  the  most  eminent  statesmen  of  that 
day,  to  consider  the  subject  of  restraining  this  power  by  legisla 
tion.  That  committee  agreed  in  the  opinion  that  the  practice  of 
dismissing  from  office  was  a  dangerous  violation  of  the  Con 
stitution,  which  had  in  their  view  been  'changed  in  this  regard 
by  construction  and  legislation/  which  were  only  another  name 
for  legislative  construction,  and  reported  sundry  bills  for  its 
correction  not  unlike  in  some  respects  to  the  present  law. 
Those  bills  failed  of  course,  but  with  the  public  recognition  of 
the  new  and  alarming  doctrine  which  followed  the  accession  of 
the  next  Administration,  that  the  public  offices,  like  the  plunder 
of  a  camp,  were  the  legitimate  spoils  of  the  victorious  party,  the 
subject  was  revived  in  1835  by  the  appointment  of  another  com 
mittee,  embracing  the  great  names  of  Calhoun,  Webster,  and 
Benton,  for  the  same  object.  The  result  of  their  labors  was  the 
introduction  of  a  bill  requiring  the  President  in  all  cases  of 
removal  to  state  the  reasons  thereof,  which  passed  the  Senate 
by  a  vote  of  31  to  1 6,  or  nearly  two  thirds  of  that  body.  In  the 
course  of  the  debate  .on  that  bill,  Mr.  Webster,  whose  unsur 
passed,  and,  as  I  think,  unequaled  ability  as  a  constitutional 
lawyer  will  be  contested  by  nobody,  held  this  emphatic  language. 

"  'After  considering  the  question  again  and  again  within  the 
last  six  years  I  am  willing  to  say  that,  in  my  deliberate  judgment, 
the  original  decision  was  wrong.  I  cannot  but  think  that  those  who 
denied  the  power  in  1789  had  the  best  of  the  argument.  It  appears 
to  me,  after  thorough  and  repeated  and  conscientious  examination 
that  an  erroneous  interpretation  was  given  to  the  Constitution  in 
this  respect  by  the  decision  of  the  First  Congress.' 

"And  again: 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         697 

"  'I  have  the  clearest  conviction  that  they  (the  Convention) 
looked  to  no  other  mode  of  displacing  an  officer  than  by  impeach 
ment  or  the  regular  appointment  of  another  person  to  the  same 
place.' 

"And  further: 

"  'I  believe  it  to  be  within  the  just  power  of  Congress  to 
reverse  the  decision  of  1789,  and  I  mean  to  hold  myself  at  liberty 
to  act  hereafter  upon  that  question  as  the  safety  of  the  Govern 
ment  and  of  the  Constitution  may  require.' 

"Mr.  Calhoun  was  equally  emphatic  in  his  condemnation  of 
the  power  and  speaks  of  previous  cases  of  removal  as  'rather 
exceptions  than  constituting  a  practice.' 

"The  like  opinion  was  obviously  entertained  by  both  Kent  and 
Story,  the  two  most  distinguished  of  the  commentators  on  the 
Constitution,  and  certainly  among  the  highest  authorities  in  the 
country.  The  former,  after  referring  to  the  construction  of  1789 
as  but  'a  loose,  incidental,  and  declaratory  opinion  of  Congress,' 
is  constrained  to  speak  of  it  as  'a  striking  fact  in  the  constitu 
tional  history  of  our  Government  that  a  power  so  transcendent 
as  that  which  places  at  the  disposal  of  the  President  alone  the 
tenure  of  every  executive  officer  appointed  by  the  President  and 
Senate,  should  depend  on  inference  merely,  and  should  have  been 
gratuitously  declared  by  the  First  Congress  in  opposition  to  the 
high  authority  of  the  Federalist,  and  supported  or  acquiesced  in 
by  some  of  those  distinguished  men  who  questioned  or  denied 
the  power  of  Congress  to  incorporate  a  national  bank.'  (i 
Kent's  Commentaries,  sec.  16,  p.  308.)  The  latter  speaks  of  it 
with  equal  emphasis  as  'constituting  the  most  extraordinary  case 
in  the  history  of  the  Government  of  a  power  conferred  by  impli 
cation  on  the  Executive  by  the  assent  of  a  bare  majority  in 
Congress  which  has  not  been  questioned  on  many  other  occa 
sions.'  (2  Commentaries,  sec.  1543.) 

"The  same  opinion,  too,  is  already  shown  upon  the  testi 
mony  of  Judge  McLain,  as  cited  above,  to  have  been  shared  by 
'the  old  Supreme  Court,,  with  Marshall  at  its  head.'  It  seems, 
indeed,  as  though  there  had  been  an  unbroken  current  of  senti 
ment  from  sources  such  as  these  through  all  our  history  against 
the.  existence  of  this  power.  If  there  be  any  apparently  excep 
tional  cases  of  any  note  but  the  equivocal  one  of  Mr.  Madison, 
they  will  be  found  to  rest  only,  as  I  think,  upon  the  legislation 
of  1789  and  the  long  practice  that  is  supposed  to  have  followed 
it.  I  make  no  account  of  the  opinions  of  Attorneys  General, 
although  I  might  have  quoted  that  of  Mr.  Wirt,  in  1818,  to  the 
effect  that  it  was  only  when  Congress  had  not  undertaken  to  fix 


698  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  tenure  of  the  office  that  the  commission  could  run  during  the 
pleasure  of  the  President.  They  belong  to  the  same  category  as 
those  of  Cabinet  officers.  It  may  not  be  amiss,  however,  to  add 
just  here  that  although  this  question  was  elaborately  argued  by 
myself  upon  the  introduction  of  the  bill  to  regulate  removals 
from  office  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  was  substan 
tially  the  same  as  the  present  law,  which  was  depending  at  that 
time,  no  voice  but  one  was  lifted  up  in  the  course  of  a  pro 
tracted  debate  against  the  constitutionality  of  the  measure 
itself. 

''What,  then,  is  there  in  the  legislation  of  1789,  which  is 
claimed  to  be  not  only  a  contemporary  but  an  authoritative 
exposition  of  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution,  and  has  no  value 
whatever  except  as  the  expression  of  an  opinion  as  to  the  policy 
of  making  the  heads  of  Departments  dependent  on  the  President, 
unless  the  acts  of  that  small  and  inexperienced  Congress  are 
to  be  taken  as  of  binding  force  upon  their  successors  and  as  a 
sort  of  oracular  outgiving  upon  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution  ? 

''Whatever  may  have  been  the  material  provisions  of  the 
several  acts  passed  at  that  session,  for  the  establishment  of  these 
Departments,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  it  was  intended  to 
accomplish  a  result  so  clearly  not  within  the  province  of  the 
law-maker  as  the  binding  settlement  of  the  sense  of  that  instru 
ment  on  so  grave  a  question.  The  effect  of  these  acts  has,  I 
think,  been  greatly  misunderstood  by  those  who  rely  on  them 
for  such  a  purpose.  All  that  they  amount  to  is  the  concession 
to  the  President,  in  such  a  form  as  was  agreeable  to  his  friends, 
of  a  power  of  removal  which  the  majority  was  disposed  to 
accord  to  him  in  cases  where  the  tenure  of  the  officer  was  left 
indefinite,  and  the  office  was  therefore  determinable  at  will,  but 
which  those  friends  declined  to  accept  as  a  grant,  because  they 
claimed  it  as  a  right.  The  result  was  but  a  compromise,  which 
evaded  the  issue  by  substituting  an  implied  grant  for  an  express 
one,  and  left  the  question  in  dispute  just  where  it  found  it.  The 
record  shows,  however,  that  even  in  this  shape  the  bill  finally 
passed  the  House  by  a  vote  of  only  29  to  22.  In  the  Senate, 
however,  where  the  debate  does  not  appear,  it  was  carried  only 
by  the  casting  vote  of  the  Vice  President,  not  properly  himself 
a  legislative  but  an  executive  officer,  who  had  a  very  direct 
interest  in  the  decision. 

'The  case  shows,  moreover,  as  already  suggested,  that  there 
was  no  question  involved  as  to  the  duration  of  the  office. 
Whether  it  could  be  so  limited,  as  has  been  done  in  the  tenure- 
of-omce  law,  was  not  a  point  in  controversy,  and  is  not,  of 
course,  decided.  That  it  might  be  so,  is  not  disputed  as  to  the 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         699 

'inferior'  offices.  The  thing  itself  was  done,  and  the  right  to  do 
it  acquiesced  in  and  affirmed,  as  shown  already  in  the  case  of 
Marbury  vs.  Madison,  as  early  as  1801.  It  cannot  be  shown, 
however,  that  there  is  any  difference  between  the  cases  of 
inferior  and  superior  offices  in  this  respect.  There  is  no  word 
in  the  Constitution  to  require  that  the  latter  shall  hold  only  at 
pleasure.  Both  are  created  by  law,  and  Mr.  Madison  himself 
admits,  in  the  debate  of  1789,  that  'the  legislative  power  creates 
the  office,  defines  the  power,  limits  its  duration,  and  annexes  the 
compensation.'  All  that  the  Constitution  contains  is  the  excep 
tion  from  the  general  power  of  appointment  in  the  authority  to 
Congress  to  vest  that  power  in  inferior  cases  in  the  President 
alone,  in  the  courts  of  law,  or  in  the  heads  of  Departments. 
But  there  is  nothing  here  as  to  the  power  of  removal — nothing 
but  as  to  the  privilege  of  dispensing  with  the  Senate  in  the 
matter  of  appointments,  and  no  limitation  whatever  upon  its 
power  over  the  office  itself  in  the  one  case  more  than  in  the 
other. 

"And  now  let  me  ask  what  did  the  decision  amount  to, 
supposing  it  had  even  ruled  the  question  at  issue,  but  the  act 
of  a  mere  Legislature  with  no  greater  powers  than  ourselves? 
Is  there  anything  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Congress  of  1789  to 
indicate  that  it  ever  assumed  to  itself  the  prerogative  of  setting 
itself  up  as  an  interpreter  of  the  fundamental  law?  The  men 
who  composed  it  understood  their  functions  better  than  to  sup 
pose  that  it  had  any  jurisdiction  over  questions  of  this  sort.  If 
it  had,  so  have  we,  and  judgments  may  be  reversed  on  a  rehear 
ing,  as  constitutions  cannot  be.  But  if  it  did  exist  whence  was  it 
derived  ?  How  was  the  Congress  to  bind  the  people  by  altering 
the  law  to  which  it  owed  its  own  existence,  and  all  its  powers? 
It  could  not  bind  its  successors  by  making  even  its  own  enact 
ments  irrepealable.  If  it  had  a  right  to  give  an  opinion  upon  the 
meaning  of  the  Constitution,  why  may  we  not  do  the  same  thing  ? 
The  President  obviously  assumes  that  they  were  both  wiser  and 
better  than  ourselves.  If  the  respect  which  he  professes  for 
their  opinions  had  animated  him  in  regard  to  the  Congresses 
which  have  sat  under  his  administration,  the  nation  would  have 
been  spared  much  tribulation  and  we  relieved  of  the  painful 
necessity  of  arraigning  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  Republic  at 
your  bar  for  his  crimes  against  order,  and  liberty,  and  his  open 
defiance  of  law. 

"However  it  may  be  with  others,  I  am  not  one  of  those  who 
think  that  all  wisdom  and  virtue  have  perished  with  our  fathers, 
or  that  they  were  better  able  to  comprehend  the  import  of  an 
instrument  with  whose  practical  workings  they  were  unfamiliar 


7OO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

than  we  who  are  sitting  under  the  light  of  an  experience  of 
eighty  years,  and  suffering  from  the  mistakes  which  they  made 
in  regard  to  the  future.  They  made  none  greater  than  the 
illusion  of  supposing  that  it  was  impossible  for  our  institutions 
to  throw  up  to  the  surface  a  man  like  Andrew  Johnson ;  and  yet 
it  was  this  mistake — perhaps  no  other — that  settled  the  first 
precedent,  which  was  so  likely  to  be  followed,  in  regard  to  the 
mischievous  power  of  removal  from  office.  But  if  twenty-nine 
votes  in  the  House  at  that  day,  making  a  meager  majority  of 
only  seven,  and  nine  only  in  a  Senate  that  was  equally  divided, 
in  the  first  hours  of  constitutional  life,  and  with  such  a  Presi 
dent  as  Washington,  to  fling  a  rose-colored  light  over  the  future 
of  the  Republic,  had  even  intended  to  give,  and  did  give,  a 
construction  to  our  great  charter  of  freedom,  what  is  to  be 
said  of  133  votes  to  37,  constituting  more  than  three  fourths  of 
one  House,  and  of  35  to  n,  or  nearly  a  like  proportion  of  the 
other,  in  the  maturity  of  our  strength,  with  a  population  of 
nearly  forty  millions,  and  under  the  light  of  an  experience  which 
has  proved  that  even  the  short  period  of  eighty  years  was  capable 
of  producing  what  our  progenitors  supposed  to  be  impossible 
even  in  the  long  tract  of  time  ? 

"Bui  there  is  one  other  consideration  that  presents  itself 
just  here,  and  it  is  this:  it  does  not  strike  me  by  any  means  as 
clear  that  there  was  anything  in  the  act  of  1789,  aside  from  any 
supposed  attempt  to  give  it  the  force  of  an  authoritative  exposi 
tion  of  the  Constitution,  that  was  necessarily  inconsistent  with 
the  view  of  that  instrument  which  I  have  been  endeavoring  to 
maintain.  Taking  the  authority  lodged  by  it  with  the  President 
as  a  mere  general  grant  of  power,  there  was  nothing  certainly  in 
its  terms  to  prevent  it.  So  far  at  least  as  regarded  the  inferior 
officers,  it  resulted  from  the  express  authority  of  Congress  to 
vest  the  power  of  appointment  in  the  President  alone,  that  they 
might  have  even  left  the  power  of  removal  in  the  same  hands  also 
as  an  incident.  And  so,  too,  as  to  the  superior  ones.  The  power 
to  remove  in  any  case  was  but  an  implied  one.  If  it  was  neces 
sary,  as  claimed,  to  enable  the  Executive  to  perform  his  proper 
functions  under  the  Constitution,  instead  of  raising  the  power  in 
himself  by  the  illogical  inference,  that  it  must  belong  to  him 
qua  Executive,  it  presented  one  of  the  very  cases  for  which  it  is 
provided  expressly  that  Congress  shall  'make  all  laws  that  shall 
be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  all  power 
vested  by  the  Constitution  in  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  or  in  any  Department  or  officer  thereof.'  To  infer  in  the 
face  of  such  a  provision  as  this,  that  any  or  all  powers  necessary 
to  either  department  of  the  Government  belong  to  them,  of 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  70! 

course,  because  they  are  necessary,  is  a  reflection  on  the  under 
standings  of  the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  and  its  effect  to 
nullify  the  provision  itself,  by  enabling  the  other  Departments 
of  the  Government  to  dispense  entirely  with  the  action  of  the 
law-maker. 

"But,  admitting  the  act  of  1789  to  import,  in  its  full  extent, 
all  that  it  is  claimed  to  have  decided,  it  is  further  insisted  that  this 
untoward  precedent  has  been  ripened  into  unalterable  law  by  a 
long  and  uninterrupted  practice  in  conformity  with  it.  If  it 
were  even  true,  as  stated,  there  would  be  nothing  marvelous  in 
the  fact  that  it  has  been  followed  up  by  other  legislation  of  a 
kindred  character.  It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  a  general  opinion 
did  prevail  for  many  years  that  all  the  offices  of  the  Government 
not  otherwise  provided  for  in  the  Constitution  ought  to  be  held 
at  will,  for  the  obvious  reason,  among  ethers,  that  it  rendered 
the  process  of  removal  easy  by  making  an  impeachment  unneces 
sary.  The  only  question  in  dispute  was  in  whose  hands  this 
power  could  be  most  appropriately  lodged.  It  so  happened,  how 
ever,  that  the  first  of  our  Presidents  brought  with  him  into  the 
office  an  elevation  of  character  that  placed  him  above  all  sus 
picion,  and  assured  to  him  a  confidence  so  unbounded  that  it 
would  have  been  considered  entirely  safe  to  vest  him  with 
unlimited  command;  and  it  was  but  natural,  as  it  was  certainly 
highly  convenient,  that  the  exercise  of  that  will,  which  was  to 
determine  the  life  of  the  officer,  should  be  lodged  with  him.  It 
was  so  lodged. 

"But  is  there  anything  remarkable  in  the  fact  that  the 
precedent  thus  set  should  have  been  followed  up  in  the  practice 
of  the  Government?  It  would  have  been  still  more  remarkable 
if  it  had  been  otherwise.  It  was  a  question  of  patronage  and 
power — of  rewarding  friends,  and  punishing  enemies.  A  suc 
cessful  candidate  for  the  Presidency  was  always  sure  to  bring 
in  with  him  a  majority  in  the  popular  branch  at  least,  along 
with  a  host  of  hungry  followers  flushed  with  their  victory  and 
hungering  after  the  spoils.  Was  it  expected  that  they  should 
abridge  his  power  to  reward  his  friends,  or  air  their  own  virtue 
by  self-denying  ordinances?  That  would  have  been  too  much 
for  men,  and  politicians,  too.  No.  Though  the  wisest  states 
men  of  the  country  had  realized  and  deplored  for  forty  years  at 
least  the  giant  vice  which  had  been  gnawing  into  the  very 
entrails  of  the  state,  and  threatened  to  corrupt  it  in  all  its  mem 
bers,  there  was  no  remedy  left,  but  the  intervention  of  that 
Providence  which  has  purified  the  heart  of  the  nation  through 
the  blood  of  its  children,  and  cast  down  the  man  who  'but  yester 
day  might  have  stood  against  the  world/  so  low,  that  with  all 


7<D2  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

his  royal  patronage  there  are  none  left — no,  I  think  not  one — 
'so  poor  as  to  do  him  reverence.' 

"It  is  not  even  true,  however,  that  the  precedent  of  the 
Congress  of  1789  has  been  followed  invariably  and  without 
interruption  since  that  time.  The  history  of  our  legislation 
shows  not  only  repeated  instances  wherein  the  tenure  of  office 
has  been  so  precisely  denned  as  to  take  the  case  entirely  out  of 
the  control  of  the  Executive,  but  some  in  which  even  the  power 
of  removal  itself  has  been  substantially  exercised  by  Congress, 
as  one  would  suppose  it  might  reasonably  be,  where  it  creates 
and  may  destroy,  makes  and  may  unmake,  even  the  subject  of 
controversy  itself. 

"The  act  of  1801,  already  referred  to  in  connection  with 
the  case  of  Marbury  and  Madison,  assigning  a  tenure  of  five 
years  absolutely  to  the  officer,  involves  a  manifest  departure 
from  it. 

"The  five  several  acts  of  August  14.  1848,  March  3,  1849, 
September,  1850,  and  May  3,  1854,  providing  for  the  appointment 
of  judges  in  the  Territories  of  Oregon,  Minnesota,  New  Mexico, 
Kansas,  and  Nebraska,  and  fixing  their  terms  of  office  at  four 
years  absolutely,  are  all  within  the  same  category. 

"The  act  of  25th  February,  1863,  followed  by  that  of  June 
3,  1864,  establishing  the  office  of  Comptroller  of  the  Currency, 
defining  his  term  and  making  him  irremovable  except  by  and 
with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  and  upon  reasons  to 
be  shown,  is  another  of  the  same  description. 

"The  act  of  March  3,  1865,  which  authorizes  any  military 
or  naval  officer  who  has  been  dismissed  by  the  authority  of  the 
President  to  demand  a  trial  by  court-martial,  and  in  default  of 
its  allowance  within  six  months,  or  of  a  sentence  of  dismissal 
or  death  thereby,  avoids  the  order  of  the  Executive;  and  the 
act  of  July  13,  1866,  which  provides  that  no  officer  in  time  of 
peace  shall  be  dismissed  except  in  pursuance  of  a  sentence  of  a 
court-martial,  are  both  examples  of  like  deviation  of  the  strong 
est  kind,  for  the  double  reason  that  the  President  is,  under  the 
Constitution,  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
of  the  United  States,  and  none  but  civil  officers  are  amenable 
to  the  process  of  impeachment,  and  that  the  officer  dismissed  is 
absolutely  restored,  awakened  into  new  life,  and  raised  to  his 
feet  by  the  omnipotent  fiat  of  the  legislative  power. 

"And,  lastly,  the  act  of  I5th  May,  1820,  (3  Statutes,  582,) 
which  dismisses  by  wholesale  a  very  large  and  important  class 
of  officers  at  periods  specially  indicated  therein,  not  only  fixes 
the  tenure  prospectively,  but  involves  a  clear  exercise  of  the 
power  of  removal  itself  on  the  part  of  the  Legislature. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         703 

"Further  developments  in  the  same  direction  would  no  doubt 
reward  the  diligence  of  the  more  pains-taking  inquirer.  That, 
however,  would  only  be  a  work  of  supererogation.  Enough  have 
been  shown  to  demonstrate  beyond  denial  that  the  practice 
relied  on  has  been  anything  but  uniform. 

"To  establish  even  a  local  custom  or  prescription  the  ele 
ment  of  continuity  is  as  important  as  that  of  time.  Any  break 
in  that  continuity  by  an  adverse  entry  or  even  a  continual  claim, 
would  arrest  the  flow  of  a  statute  of  limitations  against  the  right 
ful  owner  of  a  tenement.  An  interruption  of  the  enjoyment 
would  be  equally  fatal  to  a  prescription.  But  are  we  to  be  told 
that  a  case  which  in  this  view  would  not  even  be  sufficient  to 
establish  a  composition  for  tithes,  or  a  trifling  easement  as 
between  individuals,  is  sufficient  to  raise  a  prescription  against 
a  constitutional  right  or  to  abrogate  the  fundamental  law  of  a 
nation  and  bar  the  inappreciable  inheritance  of  its  people  ?  The 
very  statement  of  the  proposition  would  seem  to  furnish  its  own 
refutation. 

"But  this  is  not  all.  If  the  case  had  even  been  one  of  unin 
terrupted  continuity,,  how  is  it  as  to  the  element  of  time?  To 
settle  a  custom,  either  public  or  private,  it  must  have  the  hoar 
of  antiquity  upon  it;  its  origin  must  be  traced  far  back  into  the 
night  of  time,  so  far  that  no  living  memory  can  measure  it,  and 
no  man  can  say  that  he  has  drunk  at  its  head-springs  or  stood 
beside  its  cradle.  What  is  the  case  here?  It  is  a  question  of  the 
fundamental  law  of  a  people  whose  dominions  embrace  a  con 
tinent,  and  whose  numbers  are  multitudinous  as  the  stars  of 
heaven.  A  little  more  than  three  quarters  of  a  century  will 
measure  the  career  that  they  have  thus  far  run.  What  a  mere 
span  is  this?  Why  I  have  seen  on  this  floor,  a  not  uninterested 
spectator  of  this  great  drama,  a  veteran  statesman,  known  by  fame, 
and  perhaps  personally,  to  all  of  you,  whose  years  go  back  behind 
your  Constitution  itself.  But  what  is  a  century  but  the  briefest 
hour  in  the  life  of  a  State  ?  How  is  a  mere  non-user  for  seventy- 
five  of  its  infant  years  to  be  set  up  either  to  bar  a  fundamental 
right,  or  to  prove  that  it  never  existed?  It  required  six  centuries 
of  struggle  with  the  prerogative  to  settle  the  British  constitution 
firmly  upon  the  foundations  of  Magna  Charta,  and  no  hostile 
precedent  of  the  reigns  of  either  the  Plantagenets  or  Tudors  was 
allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  onward  movement  that  cul 
minated  in  the  revolution  of  1688.  And  yet  it  is  gravely  urged 
on  us,  that  the  conduct  of  our  national  life  is  to  be  regulated  by 
the  mistakes  of  its  childhood,  and  that  the  grand  patrimony  of 
the  Revolution  has  been  squandered  beyond  recovery  by  the 


704 


THOMAS   WILLIAMS 


thoughtless  improvidence,  or  too  generous  and  trustful  prodi 
gality  of  an  earlier  heir  who  had  just  come  to  his  estate. 

"And  now  I  may  venture  to  say,  I  think,  that  it  has  been 
shown  abundantly  that  all  the  resources  of  the  President  on  this 
point  have  failed  him.  The  awards  of  reason,  the  judgments  of 
the  courts,  the  opinions  of  statesmen,  lawyers,  and  publicists, 
the  precedent  of  1789,  and  the  practice  of  the  Government,  are 
all  against  him." 

At  this  point  the  effect  of  an  illness  showed  itself 
so  strongly  that  Manager  Butler  requested  an  adjourn 
ment  on  account  of  it.  He  was  ready,  however,  the  next 
day,  and  proceeded. 

"Mr.  President  and  Senators,"  he  continued,  "I  have  to 
thank  you  for  the  indulgence  which  you  were  kind  enough  to 
extend  to  me  yesterday  at  a  time  when  I  very  much  wanted  it. 
I  shall  endeavor,  however,  to  testify  my  gratitude  by  not  abus 
ing  it. 

"Before  I  closed  yesterday  I  was  referring  to  the  position 
taken  by  me,  and,  as  I  thought,  sufficiently  demonstrated,  that 
the  President  had  failed  in  all  his  supports;  that  the  reason  of 
the  thing,  the  natural  reason,  the  cultivated  reason  of  the  law, 
the  judicial  sentiment,  the  opinions  of  commentators,  the  pre 
cedent  of  1789,  and  even  the  practice,  were  all  against  him;  but 
then  I  suggested  that  there  was  one  resource  still  left,  and  to 
that  I  now  come,  and  that  is  in  the  opinion  of  what  is  sometimes 
called  his  Cabinet,  the  trusted  counselors  whom  he  is  pleased  to 
quote  as  the  advisers  whom  the  Constitution  and  the  practice  of 
the  Government  have  assigned  to  him.  If  all  the  world  has  for 
saken  him,  they,  at  least,  are  still  faithful  to  the  chief  whom 
they  have  so  long  accompanied,  and  so  largely  comforted  and 
encouraged  through  all  his  manifold  usurpations. 

"It  is  true  that  these  gentlemen  have  not  been  allowed  to 
prove,  as  they  would  have  desired  to  do,  that  maugre  all  the 
reasoning  of  judges,  lawyers,  and  publicists,  they  were  implicitly 
of  the  opinion,  and  so  advised  the  President,  that  the  tenure-of- 
office  law,  not  being  in  accordance  with  his  will,  was,  of  course, 
unconstitutional.  It  may  be  guessed,  I  suppose,  without  damage 
to  our  case,  that  if  allowed  they  would  have  proved  it.  With 
large  opportunities  for  information  I  have  not  heard  of  any 
occasion  wherein  they  have  ever  given  any  opinion  to  the  Presi 
dent,  except  the  one  that  was  wanted  by  him,  or  known  to  be 
agreeable  to  his  will.  If  there  had  been  time  I  should  have 
been  glad  to  hear  from  some  of  these  functionaries  on  that 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         705 

question.  It  would  have  been  pleasant  to  hear  the  witness  on 
the  stand  at  least,  discourse  of  constitutional  law.  If  the  public 
interest  has  not  suffered,  the  public  curiosity  has  at  least  been 
balked  by  the  denial  of  the  high  privilege  of  listening  to  the 
luminous  expositions  which  some  of  these  learned  Thebans, 
whose  training  has  been  so  high  as  to  warrant  them  in  denoun 
cing  us  all — the  legislators  of  the  nation — as  no  better  than  'Con 
stitution  tinkers/  would  have  been  able  to  help  us  with. 

"It  is  a  large  part  of  the  defense  of  the  President,  as  set  forth 
in  his  voluminous  special  plea,  and  elaborated  in  the  argument 
of  the  opening  counsel,  not  only  that  his  Cabinet  agreed  with 
him  in  his  views  as  to  the  law,  but  that  if  he  has  erred,  it  was 
under  the  advice  received  from  those  whom  the  law  had  placed 
around  him.  It  is  not  shown,  however,  and  was  not  attempted 
to  be  shown,  that  in  regard  to  the  particular  offense  for  which 
he  is  now  arraigned  before  you  they  were  ever  consulted  by  him. 
But  to  clear  this  part  of  the  case  of  all  possible  cavil  or  excep 
tion,  I  feel  that  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  ask  your  attention  to  a 
few  remarks  upon  the  relations  of  the  President  with  this  ille 
gitimate  body,  this  excrescence,  this  mere  fungus,  born  of  decay, 
which  has  been  compounded  in  process  of  time  out  of  the  heads 
of  the  Departments,  and  has  shot  up  within  the  last  few  years 
into  the  formidable  proportions  of  a  directory  for  the  general 
government  of  the  State. 

"The  first  observation  that  suggests  itself  is  that  this  refer 
ence  to  the  advice  of  others  proceeds  on  the  hypothesis 
that  the  President  himself  is  not  responsible,  and  is  there 
fore  at  war  with  the  principal  theory  of  the  defense,  which 
is  that  he  is  the  sole  responsible  head  of  the  executive 
department,  and  must  therefore,  ex  necessitate,  in  order 
to  the  performance  of  his  appropriate  duties,  have  the 
undisputed  right  to  control  and  govern  and  remove  them  at 
his  own  mere  will — as  he  has  just  done  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Stan- 
ton — a  theory  which  precludes  the  idea  of  advice  in  the  fact  that 
it  makes  the  adviser  a  slave.  What,  then,  does  the  President 
intend?  Does  he  propose  to  abandon  this  line  of  defense?  He 
cannot  do  it  without  surrendering  his  case. 

"Is  it  his  purpose,  then,  to  divert  us  from  the  track  by 
doubling  on  his  pursuers,  and  leading  them  off  on  a  false  scent, 
or  does  he  intend  the  offer  of  a  vicarious  sacrifice?  Does  he 
think  to  make  mere  scapegoats  of  his  counselors  by  laying  all 
his  multitudinous  sins  upon  their  backs?  Does  he  propose  to 
enact  the  part  of  another  Charles,  by  surrendering  another 
Strafford  to  the  vengeance  of  the  Commons?  We  must  decline 
to  accept  the  offer.  We  want  no  ministerial  heads.  We  do  not 


706  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

choose  in  the  pursuit  of  higher  game  to  stoop  to  any  ignobler 
quarry  either  on  the  land  or  on  the  sea.  It  would  be  anything 
but  magnanimous  in  us  to  take,  as  it  would  be  base  in  him  to 
offer,  the  heads  of  those  whom  our  own  past  legislation  has 
degraded  into  slaves.  When  Caesar  falls  his  counselors  will 
disappear  along  with  him.  Perhaps  he  thinks,  however,  that 
nobody  is  responsible.  But  shall  we  allow  him  to  justify  in  one 
breath  the  removal  of  Mr.  Stanton  on  the  ground  that  under 
the  law  he  was  his  master,  and  then  in  another,  when  arraigned 
for  this,  to  say  that  he  is  not  responsible  because  he  took  advice 
from  those  who  are  but  mere  automata — only  his  'hands  and 
voice,'  in  the  language  of  his  counsel — and  no  more  than  the 
mere  creatures  of  his  imperial  will?  This  would  be  a  sad  con 
dition,  indeed,  for  the  people  of  a  Republic  claiming  to  be  free. 
We  can  all  understand  the  theory  of  the  British  constitution. 
The  king  can  do  no  wrong.  The  person  of  majesty  is  sacred. 
But  then  the  irresponsibility  of  the  sovereign  is  beautifully 
reconciled  with  the  liberty  of  the  subject,  by  holding  the  ministry 
responsible,  and  thus  taking  care  that  he  shall  get  no  bad  advice 
from  them.  But  what  is  to  be  our  condition,  with  no  recourse 
between  the  two,  to  either  king  or  minister?  It  will  be  not 
unlike  what  is  said  in  the  touching  plaint  of  the  Britons,  'The 
barbarians  drive  us  to  the  sea,  and  the  sea  drives  us  back  again 
on  the  barbarians.' 

"But  who  made  these  men  the  advisers  of  the  President? 
Not  the  Constitution,  certainly ;  not  the  laws,  or  they  would  have 
made  them  free.  The  Constitution  has  given  to  him  no  advisers 
but  the  Senate,  whose  opinion  he  scouts  at  and  defies,  because 
he  cannot  get  from  it  the  advice  he  wants,  and  would  obtain, 
no  doubt,  if  it  were  reduced  to  the  condition  of  that  of  imperial 
Rome.  All  it  provides  in  regard  to  the  heads  of  Departments 
is  that  he  may  require  the  opinion  in  writing  of  each  of  them 
upon  any  subject  relating  to  the  duties  of  his  own  special  office, 
and  no  more.  He  cannot  require  it  as  to  other  matters,  and  by 
the  strongest  implication  it  was  not  intended  that  he  should  take 
it  on  any  matter  outside  of  their  own  respective  offices  and 
duties.  He  has  undoubtedly  the  privilege  which  belongs  to  other 
men,  of  seeking  for  advice  wherever  he  may  want  it;  but  if  he 
is  wise,  and  would  be  honestly  advised — as  he  does  not  appar 
ently  wish  to  be — he  will  go  to  those  who  are  in  a  condition  to 
tell  him  the  truth  without  the  risk  of  being  turned  out  of  office, 
as  Mr.  Stanton  has  been,  for  doing  so.  No  tyrant  who  has  held 
the  lives  of  those  around  him  in  his  hands,  has  ever  enjoyed  the 
counsels  of  any  but  minions  and  sycophants.  If  it  had  been  the 
purpose  of  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  to  provide  a  council 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         707 

for  the  President,  they  would  have  looked  to  it  that  he  was  not 
to  be  surrounded  with  creatures  such  as  these. 

"But  then  it  is  said  that  the  practice  of  holding  Cabinet 
councils  was  inaugurated  by  President  Washington,  and  has 
since  continued  without  interruption.  It  is  unquestionable  that 
he  did  take  the  opinions  in  writing  of  all  the  heads  of  Depart 
ments,  on  bills  that  were  submitted  to  him  in  the  constitutional 
way,  and  not  unlikely  that  he  may  have  consulted  them  as  to 
appointments,  and  other  matters  of  executive  duty  that  involved 
anything  like  discretion.  They  may  have  met  occasionally  in 
after  times  upon  the  special  invitation  of  the  President.  It  was 
not,  however,  as  I  think,  until  the  period  of  the  war,  when  the 
responsibilities  of  the  President,  as  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
armies,  were  so  largely  magnified  as  to  make  it  necessary  that  he 
should  take  counsel  from  day  to  day,  that  they  crystallized  into 
their  present  form,  as  a  sort  of  institution  of  state;  and  not  till 
the  accession  of  Andrew  Johnson,  that  they  began  to  do  the  work 
of  Congress,  in  a  condition  of  peace,  by  legislating  for  the  res 
toration  of  the  rebel  States.  From  that  time  forward,  through 
all  that  long  and  unhappy  interregnum  of  the  law-making  power, 
while  the  telegraph  was  waiting  upon  the  action  of  those  myste 
rious  councils,  that  dark  tribunal  which  was  erecting  States  by 
proclamation,  taxing  the  people,  and  surrendering  up  the  public 
property  to  keep  them  on  their  feet,  and  exercising  a  dis 
pensing  power  over  the  laws,  had  apparently  taken  the  place  of 
the  Congress  of  the  nation,  with  powers  quite  as  great  as  any 
that  the  true  Congress  has  ever  claimed.  To  say  that  the  acts 
of  this  mere  cabal,  which  looked  for  all  the  world,  like  some  dark 
conclave  of  conspirators  plotting  against  the  liberties  of  the 
people,  were  the  results  of  free  consultation  and  comparison  of 
views,  is  to  speak  without  knowledge.  I  for  one  mistrusted  them 
from  the  beginning,  and,  if  I  may  be  excused  the  egotism  again, 
it  was  under  the  inspiration  of  the  conviction  that  they  could 
not  have  held  together  so  long  under  an  imperious,  self-willed 
man  like  the  present  Executive,  without  a  thorough  submission 
to  all  his  views,  that  I  was  moved  to  introduce  and  urge,  as  I 
did,  through  great  discouragements,  but,  thank  God,  successfully, 
the  amendment  to  the  tenure-of-office  bill,  that  brings  about  this 
conflict.  It  has  come  sooner  than  I  expected,  but  not  too  soon 
to  vindicate,  by  its  timely  rescue  of  the  most  important  of  the 
Departments  of  the  Government  from  the  grasp  of  the  President, 
the  wisdom  of  a  measure  which,  if  it  had  been  the  law  at  the 
time  of  Mr.  Johnson's  accession,  would,  in  my  humble  judgment, 
have  set  his  policy  aside,  and  made  his  resistance  to  the  will  of 
the  loyal  people,  and  his  project  of  governing  the  nation  without 


708  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

a  Congress,  impossible.  The  veil  has  been  lifted  since  the  pas 
sage  of  this  law,  and  those  who  wish,  may  now  read  in  letters 
of  living  light  the  great  fact,  that  during  the  progress  of  all  this 
usurpation  that  has  convulsed  the  nation,  and  kept  the  South  in 
anarchy  for  three  long  years,  there  was  scarce  a  ripple  of  dis 
sent  to  ruffle  the  stagnant  surface  of  those  law-making  and  law- 
breaking  cabals,  those  mere  beds  of  justice,  where,  in  accord 
ance  with  the  theory  of  the  President  himself,  there  was  but  one 
will  that  reigned  undisputed  and  supreme. 

"To  insist,  then,  that  any  apology  is  to  be  found  for  the 
delinquencies  of  the  President,  in  the  advice  of  a  Cabinet,  where 
a  difference  of  opinion  was  considered  treason  to  the  head,  and 
loyalty  to  the  law,  instead  of  to  the  will  of  the  President,  pun 
ished  by  dismissal,  is,  as  it  seems  to  me,  on  his  part,  the  very 
climax  of  effrontery.  What  adequate  cause  does  the  President 
now  assign  for  the  removal  of  Mr.  Stanton  ?  His  counsel  prom 
ised  us  in  their  opening,  that  they  would  exhibit  reasons  to  show 
that  it  was  impossible  to  allow  him  to  continue  to  hold  the  office. 
They  have  failed  to  do  it.  They  have  not  even  attempted  it. 
Was  it  because  he  had  failed  to  perform  his  duties,  or  had  in 
any  way  offended  against  the  law?  The  President  alleges 
nothing  of  the  kind.  Was  it  even  a  personal  quarrel  ?  Nothing 
of  this  sort  is  pretended  either.  All  that  we  can  hear  of,  is  that 
there  was  a  'want  of  mutual  confidence;'  that  'his  relations  to 
Mr.  Stanton  were  such  as  to  preclude  him  from  resorting  to  him 
for  advice'  (Heaven  save  the  mark!)  and  that  he  did  not  think 
he  could  be  any  longer  safely  responsible  for  him.  His  counsel 
say  that  Mr.  Stanton  is  a  thorn  in  his  side.  Well  a  thorn  in  the 
flesh  is  sometimes  good  for  the  spirit.  But  so  are  Grant  and 
Sherman  and  Sheridan,  and  so  is  Congress,  and  so  is  every  loyal 
man  in  the  country  who  questions  or  resists  his  will.  The  trouble 
is,  as  everybody  knows,  that  Mr.  Stanton  does  not  indorse  his 
policy,  and  cannot  be  relied  on  to  assist  him  in  obstructing  the 
laws  of  Congress;  and  that  is  just  the  reason  why  you  want  this 
thorn  to  'stick,'  and,  if  need  be,  prick  and  fester  a  little  there, 
and  must  maintain  it  there,  if  you  would  be  faithful  to  the  nation 
and  to  yourselves.  You  cannot  let  Mr.  Stanton  go,  by  an 
acquittal  of  the  President,  without  surrendering  into  his  hands 
the  very  last  fortress  that  you  still  hold,  and  are  now  holding 
only  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet. 

"But  there  is  a  point  just  here  that  seems  to  have  been 
entirely  overlooked  by  the  counsel  for  the  President,  to  which 
I  desire  especially  to  invite  your  attention.  It  seems  to  have 
been  assumed  by  them  throughout — if  it  is  not,  indeed,  distinctly 
asserted  in  the  defendant's  plea — that  if  they  shall  be  able  to 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         709 

succeed  in  establishing  a  power  of  removal  in  the  President, 
either  under  the  Constitution  or  the  act  of  1789,  erecting  the 
Department  now  in  question,  he  may  exercise  that  power  at  his 
mere  will  and  pleasure,  without  reason  and  without  responsi 
bility  ;  and  having  failed  to  show  any  adequate  cause,  or  indeed 
any  cause  whatever  for  the  act  done  here,  he  stands,  of  course, 
on  this  hypothesis.  But  is  this  the  law  ?  Is  there  no  such  thing 
as  an  abuse  of  power,  and  a  just  responsibility  as  its  attendant? 
Was  it  intended  in  either  case — whether  the  power  flowed  from 
one  source,  or  from  the  other — that  it  should  be  exercisable 
without  restraint?  That  doctrine  would  be  proper  in  a  mon 
archy,  perhaps,  but  is  ill  suited  to  the  genius  of  institutions  like 
our  own.  Nor  was  it  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Madison,  or  those  who 
voted  and  acted  with  him  in  the  Congress  of  1789.  No  man 
there  who  asserted  the  power  of  removal  to  be  in  the  Presi 
dent,  or  concurred  in  bestowing  it  on  him  for  the  occasion,  ever 
supposed  that  its  exercise  was  to  be  a  question  of  mere  caprice, 
or  whim,  or  will.  To  the  objection  that  this  would  be  the  effect 
of  the  doctrine  of  removal,  it  was  answered  by  Mr.  Madison 
himself  in  these  words : 

'  'The  danger  consists  merely  in  this:  that  the  President  can 
displace  from  office  a  man  whose  merits  require  that  he  should  be 
continued  in  it.  What  will  be  the  motive  which  the  President  can 
feel  for  such  abuse  of  his  power,  and  the  restraints  that  operate 
to  prevent  it?  In  the  first  place  he  will  be  impeached  by  the  House 
before  the  Senate  for  such  an  act  of  maladministration;  for  I  con 
tend  that  the  wanton  removal  of  meritorious  officers  would  subject 
him  to  impeachment  and  removal  from  his  own  high  trust.' 

''And  it  was,  no  doubt,  mainly  on  this  argument  that  the 
power  of  removal  was  embodied  in  the  law. 

"What,  then,  have  the  President  and  his  counsel  to  say  in 
answer  to  this?  Is  the  President  impeachable  on  his  own  case, 
or  does  he  expect  to  realize  the  fruits  of  the  argument,  and  then 
repudiate  the  very  grounds  on  which  the  alleged  construction 
rests?  WTas  Mr.  Stanton  a  meritorious  officer?  Did  his  merits 
require  that  he  should  be  continued  in  the  place  ?  No  loyal  man, 
I  ihink,  disputes  that  they  did,  and  this  Senate  has  already 
solemnly  adjudged  it,  in  their  decision  that,  upon  the  reasons 
stated  by  the  President,  there  was  no  sufficient  cause  for  his 
removal,  while  none  other  have  been  since  shown  by  the  accused 
himself.  What  then,  was  the  motive  for  this  act  of  maladmin 
istration,  as  Mr.  Madison  denominates  it?  Nothing  that  we 
are  aware  of,  except  the  fact  that  the  President  cannot  control 
the  \Var  Office  in  the  interests  of  his  policy,  so  long  as  he  is 


7IO  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

there.  Was  this,  then,  a  wanton  removal?  It  was  something 
more — it  was  a  wicked  one.  And  are  we  to  be  told  now  that 
he  is  bound  to  show  no  reasons,  and  cannot  be  compelled  to 
answer  for  it  to  the  nation,  by  those  who  claim  the  power  of 
removal  for  him  on  the  very  footing  that  its  abuse  would  be 
impeachable  ? 

"But  it  is  further  strenuously  argued,  that  although  the  law 
may  be  constitutional,  and  the  case  of  Mr.  Stanton  within  it, 
as  it  has  been  already  held  to  be  by  this  Senate,  the  case  was 
not  so  clear  a  one  as  to  authorize  a  charge  of  crime  against  the 
President,  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  he  has  willfully  miscon 
strued  it ;  and  that  although  wherever  a  law  is  passed  through  the 
forms  of  legislation,  it  is  his  duty  to  see  that  it  is  faithfully  exe 
cuted  so  long  as  it  requires  no  more  than  ministerial  action  on 
his  part,  yet,  where  it  is  a  question  of  cutting  off  a  power  con 
fided  to  him  by  the  Constitution,  and  he  alone  can  bring  about  a 
judicial  decision  for  its  settlement,  if,  on  due  deliberation  and 
advice,  he  should  be  of  the  opinion  that  the  law  was  unconsti 
tutional,  it  would  be  no  violation  of  duty  to  take  the  needful 
steps  to  raise  that  question,  so  as  to  have  it  peacefully  decided. 

"Allow  me  to  say  in  answer,  that  if  even  ignorance  of  the 
law,  which  excuses  nobody  else,  can  be  held  to  excuse  the  very 
last  man  in  the  nation  who  ought  to  be  allowed  to  plead  it,  the 
testimony  shows,  I  think,  that  he  did  not  misunderstand  its 
meaning.  His  suspension  of  Mr.  Stanton,  which  was  an  entirely 
new  procedure,  followed,  as  it  was,  by  his  report  of  the  case  to 
the  Senate  within  twenty  days  after  its  next  meeting,  is  evidence 
that  he  did  understand  the  law  as  comprehending  that  case, 
and  did  not  intend  to  violate  it,  if  he  could  get  rid  of  the  obnox 
ious  officer  without  resorting  to  so  extreme  and  hazardous  a 
remedy. 

"But  the  question  here  is  not  so  much  whether  he  ignorantly 
and  innocently  mistook  the  law,  as  whether  in  the  case  referred 
to  of  an  interference  with  the  power  claimed  by  him  under  the 
Constitution,  he  may  suspend  the  operation  of  a  law  by  assuming 
it  to  be  unconstitutional,  and  setting  it  aside  until  the  courts 
shall  have  decided  that  it  is  a  constitutional  and  valid  one.  In 
the  case  at  issue,  it  was  not  necessary  to  violate  the  law,  either 
by  contriving  to  prevent  the  incumbent  from  resuming  his  place 
under  it,  or  turning  him  out  by  violence  after  he  had  been  duly 
reinstated  by  the  Senate,  if  he  honestly  desired  to  test  its  validity 
in  the  judicial  forum.  All  that  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  do, 
was  to  issue  his  order  of  removal,  and  give  the  officer  a  notice 
of  that  order,  and  its  object.  If  he  refused  to  obey,  the  next 
and  obvious  step  would  have  been  to  direct  the  Attorney  General 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  7!! 

to  sue  out  a  writ  of  quo  warranto,  on  his  own  relation.  This 
was  not  his  course.  The  remedy  was  not  summary  enough  for 
his  uses,  as  his  special  counsel,  employed  only  after  the  arrest 
of  his  pseudo  Secretary  Thomas,  testifies,  because  it  would  have 
allowed  the  law  to  reign  in  the  meanwhile,  instead  of  creating  an 
interregnum  of  mere  will  by  which  he  hoped  to  supersede  it.  His 
project  was  to  seize  the  place;  by  craft,  if  possible;  by  force,  if 
necessary.  For  this  purpose  he  claims  to  have  made  an  arrange 
ment  with  General  Grant  for  its  surrender  to  himself,  in  case 
the  judgment  of  the  Senate  should  restore  the  officer,  and  now 
taxes  that  distinguished  officer  with  bad  faith  to  him  individually, 
for  his  obedience  to  the  law. 

"It  stands,  therefore,  upon  his  own  confession,  that  he 
intended  to  prevent  Mr.  Stanton  from  resuming  his  position,  in 
which  case — as  he  well  knew,  and  as  his  Attorney  Gen 
eral  knew,  and  must  have  informed  him,  there  was  no 
remedy  at  law  for  the  ejected  officer.  Foiled  and  baffled 
by  the  integrity  of  Grant,  after  full  deliberation  he  issues 
his  order  of  removal  on  the  2ist  of  February,  and  sends  it 
by  his  lieutenant,  Thomas,  with  a  commission  to  himself  to  act 
as  Secretary  ad  interim,  and  enter  upon  the  duties  of  the  office. 
He  does  not  fail  to  suggest  to  him  at  the  same  time,  that  Stanton 
is  a  coward,  and  may  be  easily  frightened  out  of  the  place  with 
a  proper  show  of  energy  on  his  part.  He  tells  him  also  that  he 
expects  him  to  support  the  Constitution  and  the  laws — as  he 
understands  them,  of  course.  Thomas  is  a  martinet.  He  knows 
no  law,  as  he  confesses,  but  the  order  of  his  Commander-in-Chief. 
He  has  been  taught  no  argument  but  arms — no  logic  but  the 
dialectics  of  hard  knocks.  Instructed  by  the  President,  he  hopes 
to  frighten  Stanton  by  his  big  looks  and  horrent  arms.  He  pro 
ceeds  upon  his  warlike  errand  in  all  the  panoply  of  a  brigadier, 
and  loftily  demands  the  keys  of  the  fortress  from  the  stern  warder, 
who  only  stipulates  for  twenty-four  hours  to  remove  his  camp 
equipage  and  baggage.  The  conquest  is  apparently  an  easy  one. 
He  reports  forthwith  to  his  chief  with  the  brevity  of  a  Caesar: 
'Veni,  vidi,  vici?  They  rejoice,  no  doubt,  together  over  the 
pusillanimity  of  the  Secretary;  and  the  puissant  Adjutant  then 
unbends,  and  flies  for  relaxation,  after  his  heroic  and  successful 
feat,  to  the  delights  and  mysteries  of  the  masquerade ;  not,  how 
ever,  until  he  has  'fought  his  battle  o'er  again,'  and  invited  his 
friends  to  be  present  at  the  surrender  on  the  following  morning, 
which  he  advises  them  that  he  intends  to  compel  by  force,  if 
necessary. 

"The  masquerade  opens.     'Fair  women  and  brave  men'  are 
there,  and — 


712  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"  'Music  ascends  with  its  voluptuous  swell, 
And  eyes  look  love  to  eyes  that  speak  again; 
And  all  goes  merry  as  a  marriage  bell.' 

'The  Adjutant  himself  is  there.  The  epaulette  has  modestly 
retired  behind  the  domino.  The  gentleman  from  Tennessee  at 
least  will  excuse  me,  if  after  his  own  example,  I  borrow  from  the 
celestial  armory,  on  which  he  draws  so  copiously,  a  little  of  that 
light  artillery,  with  which  he  blazes  along  his  track,  like  a 
November  midnight  sky  with  all  its  flaming  asteroids.  The 
Adjutant,  I  repeat,  is  there. 

"  'Grim-visaged  war  hath  smoothed  his  wrinkled  front, 
And  now,  instead  of  mounting  barbed  steeds 
To  fright  the  souls  of  fearful  adversaries, 
He  capers  nimbly  in  a  lady's  chamber 
To  the  lascivious  pleasing  of  a  lute.' 

"But  lo !  a  hand  is  laid  upon  his  shoulder,  which  startles 
him  in  the  midst  of  the  festivities,  like  the  summons  to  'Bruns 
wick's  fated  chieftain'  at  the  ball  in  Brussels,  on  the  night 
before  the  battle  in  which  he  fell.  It  is  the  messenger  of  the 
Senate,  who  conies  to  warn  him  that  his  enterprise  is  an  unlaw 
ful  one.  On  the  following  morning  he  is  waited  upon  again  by 
another  officer,  with  a  warrant  for  his  arrest  for  threats  which 
looked  to  a  disturbance  of  the  peace.  This  double  warning  chills 
his  martial  ardor.  Visions  of  impending  trouble  pass  before  his 
eyes.  He  sees,  or  thinks  he  sees,  the  return  of  civil  strife,  the 
floors  of  the  Department  dabbled,  perhaps,  like  those  of  the 
royal  palace  at  Holyrood,  with  red  spots  of  blood.  But,  above 
all,  he  feels  that  the  hand  of  the  law-maker  and  of  the  law 
itself,  which  is  stronger  than  the  sword,  is  on  him,  and  he  puts 
up  his  weapon,  and  repairs,  in  peaceful  guise,  to  take  possession 
of  his  conquest.  I  do  not  propose,  however,  to  describe  the 
interview  which  followed.  That  will  be  the  task  of  the  future 
dramatist.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to  accompany  him  back  to 
the  White  House,  where  he  receives  the  order  to  'Go  on  and  take 
possession,'  which  he  was  so  unhappily  called  back  to  contra 
dict,  and  which  it  was  then  well  understood,  of  course,  that  he 
could  not  obtain  except  by  force ;  and  he  continues  to  be  recog 
nized  as  Secretary  of  War,  without  a  portfolio  or  a  cure,  while 
he  waits  under  the  direction  of  the  President,  not  upon  the  law, 
but  only  to  see,  like  Micawber,  what  may  turn  up  here,  and  to  be 
inducted  and  installed  in  proper  form,  as  soon  as  your  previous 
decision  shall  have  been  reversed,  and  his  title  affirmed,  by  your 
votes  in  favor  of  an  acquittal.  The  idea  of  a  suit,  in  which 
direction  no  single  step  was  ever  taken,  is  now  abandoned,  if 
it  was  ever  seriously  entertained. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         713 

"The  conversation,  however,  with  General  Sherman,  who 
was  called  as  a  witness  by  the  President  himself,  settles  the  fact 
conclusively,  if  not  already  demonstrated  by  all  the  attendant 
circumstances,  that  it  was  not  his  purpose  at  any  time  to  bring 
the  case  into  the  courts  for  adjudication.  He  preferred  the  dex 
terous  finesse,  or  the  strong  hand,  to  a  reference  which  every 
sensible  lawyer  would  have  told  him  could  be  attended  with  only 
one  result,  and  that  a  judgment  in  favor  of  the  law. 

"But  in  this  great  strait,  instead  of  a  resort  to  the  Attorney 
General  himself,  his  special  counsel  Cox,  employed  only  after 
the  arrest  of  Thomas,,  is  called  to  prove  that  he  advised  against 
the  writ  of  quo  ^varranto,  because  of  'the  law's  delay,'  and 
endeavored  to  seek  a  remedy  more  summary  through  a  habeas 
corpus,  in  the  event  of  the  commitment  of  the  Secretary  ad 
interim.  Supposing  it  all  true,  however,  the  movement  came  too 
late  to  help  his  employer's  case,  by  showing  a  desire  to  put  the 
issue  in  the  way  of  a  judicial  decision  upon  the  law.  Nor  is  it 
clear  by  any  means  that  such  a  process  could  have  achieved  the 
desired  results.  With  a  warrant  good  upon  its  face,  and  charg 
ing  a  threatened  disturbance  of  the  peace,  or  an  offense  against 
a  statute  of  the  United  States,  I  doubt  whether  any  court  would 
venture  to  declare  the  warrant  void,  or  to  discharge  upon  such 
a  hearing,  on  the  footing  of  the  unconstitutionality  of  the 
law,  which  had  received  nearly  three  fourths  of  the  votes  of 
both  Houses,  or,  indeed,  of  any  law  whatever;  while  I  do  not 
see  how  even  a  decision  against  it,  could  have  had  either  the 
effect  of  ousting  Stanton  or  putting  Thomas  in  his  place.  It  is 
enough,  however,  for  the  present  purpose  that  the  prisoner  was 
discharged  on  the  motion  of  his  own  attorney. 

"The  counsel  for  the  President  admits  that  he  cannot  in 
ordinary  cases  erect  himself  into  a  judicial  tribunal,  and  decide 
that  a  law  is  unconstitutional,  because  the  effect  would  be  that 
there  could  never  be  any  judicial  decision  upon  it;  but  insists,  as 
already  stated,  that  where  a  particular  law  has  cut  off  a  power 
confided  to  him  by  the  Constitution,  he  alone  has  the  power  to 
raise  the  question  for  the  courts,  and  there  is  no  objection  to 
his  doing  it;  and  instances  the  cases  of  a  law  to  prevent  the 
making  of  a  treaty,  or  one  to  declare  that  he  shall  not  exercise 
the  functions  of  Commander-in-Chief. 

"It  has  been  already  very  fully  answered  that  there  is  no 
evidence  here  to  show  that  there  was  any  honest  purpose  what 
ever  to  bring  this  case  into  the  courts,  but  that,  on  the  con 
trary,  there  is  very  conclusive  testimony  to  prove  that  he 
intended  to  keep  it  out  of  them.  But  had  he  a  right  to  hold  this 
law  a  nullity  until  it  was  affirmed  by  another  tribunal,  whether 


714  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

it  was  constitutional  or  not  ?  The  Constitution  gives  to  him  the 
power  of  passing  upon  the  acts  of  the  two  Houses,  by  returning 
a  bill  with  his  objections  thereto,  but  if  it  is  afterwards  enacted 
by  two  thirds  of  both  it  is  provided  that  'it  shall  become  a  law.' 
What  is  a  law?  It  is  a  rule  of  civil  conduct  prescribed  by  the 
supreme  power  of  a  State.  Is  there  any  higher  power  than  the 
Legislature?  Is  it  essential  to  the  operation  of  a  law  that  it 
should  have  the  approval  of  the  judiciary,  as  well  as  of  the 
President?  It  is  as  obligatory  on  the  President  as  upon  the 
humblest  citizen.  Nay,  it  is,  if  possible,  more  so.  He  is  its 
minister.  The  Constitution  requires  that  he  shall  take  care  that 
it  be  faithfully  executed.  It  is  for  others  to  controvert  it,  if 
aggrieved,  in  a  legal  way,  but  not  for  him.  If  they  do,  however, 
it  is  at  their  peril,  as  it  would  be  at  his,  even  in  the  cases  put, 
where  it  is  asked,  with  great  emphasis,  whether  he  would  be 
bound  to  obey?  Those  cases  are  extreme  ones.  But  if  hard 
cases  are  said  to  make  bad  precedents,  it  may  be  equally 
remarked  that  extreme  cases  make  bad  illustrations.  They  are, 
moreover,  of  express  powers,  as  this  is  not.  But  it  will  be  time 
enough  to  answer  them  when  they  arise.  It  is  not  a  supposable 
contingency,  that  two  thirds  of  both  Houses  of  Congress  will 
flatly  violate  their  oaths  in  a  clear  case.  Thus  far  in  their 
history,  they  have  passed  no  law,  I  believe,  that  has  been 
adjudged  invalid.  Whenever  they  shall  be  prepared  to  do  what 
is  now  supposed,  constitutions  will  be  useless,  faith  will  have 
perished  among  men,  and  limited  representative  government 
become  impossible.  When  it  comes  to  this,  we  shall  have  revo 
lution,  with  bloody  conflicts  in  our  streets,  with  a  Congress 
legislating  behind  bayonets,  and  that  anarchy  prevailing  every 
where,  which  is  already  foreshadowed  by  the  aspect  of  a 
Department  of  this  great  Government  beleaguered  by  the 
minions  of  despotism,  with  its  head  a  prisoner,  and  armed  senti 
nels  pacing  before  its  doors.  Who  shall  say  that  the  President 
shall  be  permitted  to  disobey  even  a  doubtful  law,  in  the  asser 
tion  of  a  power  that  is  only  implied?  If  he  may,  why  not  also 
set  aside  the  obnoxious  section  of  the  appropriation  bill,  upon 
which  he  has  endeavored  unsuccessfully  to  debauch  the  officers 
of  the  Army  by  teaching  them  insubordination  to  the  law?  Why 
not  openly  disregard  your  reconstruction  acts,  as  he  will  assur 
edly  do,  if  you  shall  teach  him  by  your  verdict  here  that  he  can 
do  it  with  impunity?  The  legal  rule  is  that  the  presumption  is 
in  every  case  in  favor  of  the  law,  and  that  is  a  violent  one, 
where  none  has  ever  been  reversed.  The  President  claims  that 
this  presumption  shall  not  stand  as  against  him.  If  it  may  not 
here,  it  cannot  elsewhere.  To  allow  this  revolutionary  preten- 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         715 

sion,  is  to  dethrone  the  law  and  substitute  his  will.  To  say 
that  he  may  hold  his  office,  and  disregard  the  law,  is  to  pro 
claim  either  anarchy  or  despotism.  It  is  but  a  short  step  from 
one  extreme  to  the  other.  To  be  without  law,  and  to  leave  the 
law  dependent  on  a  single  will,  are  in  effect  but  one  and  the 
same  thing.  The  man  who  can  declare  what  is  law,  and  what  is 
not,  is  already  the  absolute  master  of  the  State. 

"But  who  is  to  try  this  case?  The  President  insists  that 
it  belongs  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Supreme  Court,  where,  as  he 
untruly  says,  he  endeavored  to  carry  it.  So  it  would,  if  the 
question  involved  were  one  of  merely  private  right.  But  in  his 
eccentric  efforts  to  get  into  one  court,  by  turning  his  back  upon 
it,  he  has  stumbled  very  unexpectedly  into  another.  It  is  not 
the  one  he  sought,  but  it  is  the  one  the  Constitution  has  provided 
for  just  such  delinquencies  as  his,  and  he  cannot  decline  its 
cognizance.  I  beg  pardon.  He  has  sent  you  word,  through  the 
special  counsel  whom  he  sends  here  with  his  personal  protest, 
that  he  might  have  declined  it,  on  the  opinion  still  entertained 
by  both  of  them,  that  this  is  no  Congress,  and  you  are  no 
court  of  competent  jurisdiction  to  bring  before  you  and  try  a 
President  of  the  United  States,  by  the  logic  of  which  argu 
ment  he  proves  equally,  of  course,  that  he  is  no  President.  To 
avoid  a  bloody  conflict,  however,  although  he  has  been  tendered 
the  necessary  aid  in  men,  and  inasmuch,  I  suppose,  as  you  have 
been  so  indulgent  as  not  to  put  him  to  the  humiliation  of  appear 
ing  in  person  at  your  bar,  he  waives  his  sufficient  plea  to  the 
jurisdiction,  and  condescends,  only  out  of  the  abundance  of  his 
grace,  and  in  a  spirit  of  forbearance,  for  which  he  claims  due 
credit  at  your  hands,  to  make  answer  before  a  tribunal  which 
he  might  rightfully  have  defied. 

"But  he  is  here  now  by  attorney,  in  what  his  other  counsel 
have  taken  great  pains  to  prove  to  you  to  be  a  court  indeed, 
although  they  insist,  not  very  consistently,  in  almost  the  same 
breath,  that  it  has  only  the  functions  of  a  jury.  I  shall  not 
dispute  that  question  with  them.  I  am  willing  to  agree  that 
the  Senate,  pro  hac  vice,  is  a  court,  and  that,  too,  of  exclusive 
jurisdiction  over  the  subject-matter  in  dispute,  from  which  it 
follows  by  a  necessary  logic,  as  I  think,  that  it  is  fully  compe 
tent  to  try  and  decide  the  whole  case  for  itself,  taking  such 
advice  as  it  thinks  proper  as  to  the  law,  and  then  rejecting  it 
if  it  is  not  satisfactory.  If  it  cannot  do  this,  it  is  but  the  shadow 
and  mockery  of  what  the  defendant's  counsel  claim  it  to  be  in 
force  and  fact.  But  by  what  name  soever  it  may  be  called,  it 
will  solve  for  the  President  the  problem  which  he  has  desired 
to  carrv  into  another  tribunal,  without  waiting  for  any 


716  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

extraneous  opinion.  It  has  already  determined  upon  the  con 
stitutionality  of  the  tenure-of-office  law,  by  enacting  it  over  his 
objections,  as  it  has  already  passed  upon  its  meaning,  by  its 
condemnation  of  the  act  for  which  he  is  now  to  answer  at  its 
bar.  It  will  say,  too,  if  I  mistake  not,  that  whether  constitu 
tional  or  not,  it  will  allow  no  executive  officer,  and  much  less 
the  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  nation,  to  assume  that  it  is  not  so, 
and  set  up  his  own  opinion  in  its  place,  until  its  previous  and 
well-considered  judgment  upon  the  same  opinion  has  been  judi 
cially  affirmed. 

"But  does  it  make  any  difference  whether  Mr.  Stanton's 
case  is  within  the  tenure-of-office  act  or  not.  Had  the  Execu 
tive  the  power  at  any  time,  either  during  the  session  or  the 
recess,  to  create  a  vacancy  to  be  filled  up  by  an  appointment  ad 
interim,  to  continue  during  his  own  pleasure;  or  if  he  had, 
could  he  prolong  a  vacancy  so  created  beyond  the  period  of  six 
months  ? 

"The  Constitution  provides — and  it  required  such  a  pro 
vision,  in  view  of  the  general  clause  which  associates  the 
Senate  with  the  President,  and  makes  their  advice  and  consent 
necessary  in  all  cases  of  appointment  to  authorize  it — that  he 
shall  have  power  to  fill  up  all  vacancies  happening  during  the 
recess,  by  temporary  commissions  to  expire  at  the  end  of  the 
next  session;  and  by  a  necessary  implication  of  course  he 
cannot  do  it  in  the  same  way,  or  without  their  advice  and  con 
sent  while  the  Senate  is  at  hand  to  afford  it.  The  word  happen, 
as  used  here,  imports  accident  or  casualty  only,  according  to  the 
best  authorities.  If  this  is  the  correct  interpretation  he  cannot, 
of  course,  create  a  vacancy  for  that  purpose  during  the  recess, 
under  the  Constitution,  although  he  may  claim  to  do  so  under 
the  law  establishing  the  Department,  which  places  the  power 
of  removal  in  his  hands.  If  he  does,  however,  the  case  then 
falls  within  the  constitutional  provision,  and  the  vacancy  thus 
created  must  be  filled  by  a  commission  to  expire  at  the  end  of 
the  next  session. 

"He  did  create  a  vacancy  in  this  case  by  the  suspension 
during  the  recess,  which  he  proceeded  to  supply  by  the  appoint 
ment  of  General  Grant  as  Secretary  of  War  ad  interim  at  his 
pleasure.  And  this  he  now  defends,  not  under  the  provisions 
of  the  tenure-of-office  law,  which  would  have  authorized  it, 
but  which  he  expressly  repudiates,  but  upon  the  footing,  in  the 
first  place,  of  his  constitutional  power. 

"Nothing  is  clearer,  however,  than  the  proposition,  that 
there  was  no  authority  to  do  this  thing  except  what  is  to  be 
found  in  the  act  which  he  repudiates.  There  are  no  laws  and 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         717 

no  precedents,  so  far  as  I  am  advised,  to  justify  or  excuse  it. 
If  he  may  suspend  indefinitely,  and  appoint  at  pleasure  a  Sec 
retary  ad  interim,  he  may  not  only  change  the  terms  of  the 
commission,  but  strip  the  Senate  of  all  participation  in  the 
appointing  power. 

"But  then  he  says,  again,  that  he  did  this  under  the  author 
ity,  also,  of  the  act  of  I3th  February,  1795,  for  filling  temporary 
vacancies.  The  tenor  of  that  act  is,,  that  in  a  case  of  vacancy 
it  shall  be  lawful  for  the  President,  if  he  deem  it  necessary,  to 
authorize  any  person  or  persons  to  perform  the  duties  until  a 
successor  is  appointed  or  such  vacancy  is  filled :  with  the  pro 
viso,  however,  that  no  one  vacancy  shall  be  supplied  in  that 
manner  for  a  longer  term  than  six  months ;  which  proves,  of 
course,  that  the  exigency  provided  for  was  only  to  be  a  tempo 
rary  one. 

"We  maintain  that  this  act  has  been  repealed  by  the  more 
recent  one  of  I3th  February,  1863,  which  confines  the  choice  of 
the  President  to  the  heads  of  the  other  Departments.  It  is  insisted, 
however,  that  while  the  former  covers  all  cases  of  vacancy,  the 
latter  is  confined  to  some  particular  instances,,  not  including 
those  of  removal,  or  such  as  may  be  brought  about  by  efflux  of 
time,  and  does  not,  therefore,  operate  as  a  repeal  to  that  extent. 
Granting  this,  for  the  sake  of  the  argument,  to  be  true,  how  is 
it  to  apply  to  a  vacancy  occurring  during  the  recess,  without  a 
repeal  of  the  constitutional  provision  which  is  intended  expressly 
for  just  such  cases?  Was  it  intended  to  supersede  it,  and  is  it 
to  be  so  interpreted?  This  will  hardly  be  pretended,  if  it  were 
even  clear  that  the  Legislature  had  such  a  power.  The  intent 
and  meaning  of  the  act  are  so  transparent  from  the  context, 
from  the  words  of  tenure,  and  from  the  six  months'  limitation, 
that  it  is  impossible  to  mistake  them,  or  even  to  doubt,  that  it 
was  designed  for  merely  accidental  and  transient  cases,  that 
were  left  unprovided  for  in  the  Constitution.  The  President's 
claim  would  perpetuate  the  vacancy  by  enabling  him  to  refuse 
to  fill  it,  or  to  nominate  a  successor. 

"If  it  be  even  true,  however,  that  he  might  have  appointed 
General  Grant  during  the  recess,  under  the  law  of  1795,  it  is 
equally  clear  that  he  could  not  continue  him  in  office,  or  pro 
tract  the  vacancy  beyond  six  months;  and  yet  he  insists,  in  his 
special  plea  in  answer  to  the  averment  of  the  absence  of  the 
condition  of  vacancy  on  the  2ist  of  February,  when  he  appointed 
General  Thomas — which  was  more  than  six  months  after  the 
appointment  of  General  Grant — that  there  was  a  continuing 
vacancy  at  that  time;  intending,  of  course,  that  the  act  of  the 
Senate  in  refusing  to  approve  his  suspension,  and  his  resump- 


718  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

tion  of  the  duties  of  the  office,  were  to  be  treated  as  of  no 
account  whatever.  From  the  premises  of  the  President,  that 
the  civil-tenure  act  was  invalid  on  constitutional  grounds,  and 
did  not.  at  all  events,  embrace  that  case,  his  inference  of  a 
continuing  vacancy  is  undeniable,  and  his  appointment  of  Gen 
eral  Thomas,  therefore,  entirely  unauthorized  by  the  act  on 
which  he  relies. 

"But  there  is  more  in  this  aspect  of  the  case  than  the  mere 
failure  of  the  authority.  Taking  it  that,  although  he  might 
possibly  remove  during  the  recess,  he  could  not  suspend  and 
appoint  a  Secretary  ad  interim  except  by  virtue  of  the  tenure-of- 
office  law,  and  that  it  may  be  well  pleaded  in  his  defense,  even 
though  he  may  have  insisted  that  he  did  not  refer  to,  or  follow, 
or  recognize  it,  I  think  it  cannot  be  a  question  among  lawyers, 
that  all  the  acts  of  a  public  officer  are  to  be  conclusively  pre 
sumed  to  have  been  done  under  the  law  which  authorized  them. 
But  then  it  will  be  said,  as  it  has  been  in  regard  to  the  proof  of 
changes  made  in  the  forms  of  commissions  to  make  them  har 
monize  with  the  now  disputed  law,  and  of  other  evidence  of  a 
kindred  character,  that  this  is  only  to  set  up  the  doctrine  of 
estoppel,  which,  though  not  unreasonable,  has  been  so  often 
characterized  as  odious  in  the  civil  courts,  against  a  defendant 
in  a  criminal  proceeding. 

"I  am  ready  to  admit  that  estoppels  are  odious,  because  they 
exclude  the  truth,  but  have  never  supposed  that  they  were  so, 
when  their  effect  was  only  to  shut  out  falsehood.  It  was  not  for 
this  purpose,  however,  in  my  view  at  least,  that  such  evidence 
was  offered ;  but  only  to  contradict  the  President's  assertions  by 
his  acts,  and  to  show  that  when  he  pleads  through  his  counsel, 
that  if  the  law  was  valid  he  honestly  believed  the  contrary,  and 
that  if  it  embraced  the  case  of  Mr.  Stanton  he  innocently  mis 
took  its  meaning,  and  did  not  intend  willfully  to  misconstrue  it, 
he  stated  what  was  not  true. 

"And  now,  a  few  words  only  upon  the  general  question  of 
intent  itself,  which  has  been  made  to  figure  so  largely  in  this 
cause,  under  the  shadow  of  the  multiplied  averments  in  regard 
to  it.  I  do  not  look  upon  those  averments  as  at  all  material ;  and 
if  not  material,  they  are,  as  every  lawyer  knows,  but  mere 
surplusage  which  never  vitiates,  and  it  is  never  necessary  to 
prove.  I  do  not  speak  as  a  criminal  lawyer,  but  there  is  no 
professional  man,  I  think,  who  reads  these  charges,  that  will  not 
detect  in  them  something  more,  perhaps  by  way  of  abundant 
caution,  than  even  the  technical  nicety  of  the  criminal  pleader. 
I  do  not  know  that  even  in  the  criminal  courts,  where  an  act 
is  charged  in  clear  violation  of  a  law  forbidding  it,  and 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         719 

especially  if  it  involve  the  case  of  a  public  officer,  that  it  is 
any  more  necessary  to  allege  that  he  violated  the  law,  with 
the  intent  to  violate  it,  than  to  aver  that  he  was  not  ignorant 
of  the  law,  which  every  man  is  bound  to  know.  The  law 
presumes  the  intent  from  the  act  itself,  which  is  a  necessary 
inference,  if  the  law  is  to  be  observed  and  its  infraction  pun 
ished;  and  the  party  committing  it,  is  responsible  for  all  the 
consequences,  whether  he  intended  them  or  not.  It  makes  no 
difference  about  the  motive,  for  wherever  a  statute  forbids  the 
doing  of  a  thing,  the  doing  it  willfully,  although  without  any 
corrupt  motive,  is  indictable.  (2  Dwarris,  677;  4  Term  Rep., 
457-)  So  when  the  President  is  solemnly  arraigned  to  answer 
here  to  the  charge  that  he  infringed  the  Constitution,  or  dis 
obeyed  the  commands  or  violated  any  of  the  provisions  of  the 
tenure  of  office  or  any  other  law,  he  cannot  plead  either  that 
lie  did  it  ignorantly  or  by  mistake,  because  ignorance  of  the 
law  excuses  nobody,  or  that  he  did  it  only  from  the  best  of 
motives,  and  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  question  of  its 
efficacy,  or  his  obligation  to  conform  to  it,  to  a  legal  test,  even 
though  he  could  prove  the  fact,  as  he  has  most  signally  failed 
to  do  in  the  case  before  you.  The  motives  of  men,  which  are 
hidden  away  in  their  own  breasts,  cannot  generally  be  scruti 
nized,  or  taken  into  the  account,  where  there  is  a  violation  of 
the  law.  An  old  Spanish  proverb  says,  that  there  is  a  place — 
not  to  be  named  to  ears  polite — which  is  'paved  with  good 
intentions.'  If  they,  or  even  bad  advice  can  be  pleaded  here 
after,  in  excuse  for  either  neglect  or  violation  of  duty  here,  it 
will  be  something  comfortable  to  die  upon  at  least,  and  few  tyrants 
will  ever  suffer  for  their  crimes.  If  Andrew  Johnson  could 
plead,  as  he  has  actually  done,  in  apology  for  his  own  dispensa 
tion  with  the  test-oath  law,  or  any  other  feature  of  his  law- 
defying  policy,  that  his  only  aim  was  to  conciliate  the  rebels 
and  facilitate  the  work  of  restoration,  his  great  exemplar, 
whom  he  has  so  closely  copied — the  ill-advised  and  headstrong 
lames  II — might  equally  have  pleaded  that  he  did  the  very 
same  thing  in  the  interests  of  universal  tolerance.  The  English 
monarch  forfeited  his  throne,  and  disinherited  his  heirs  upon 
that  cast.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  our  king  is  to  run  out 
the  parallel. 

"I  beg  to  say,  however,  in  this  connection,  that  I  do  not  by 
any  means  admit,  that  a  case  like  this  is  to  be  tried  or  judged 
by  the  rigid  rules  and  narrow  interpretations  of  the  criminal 
courts.  There  is  no  question  here  of  the  life  or  liberty  or 
property  of  the  delinquent ;  it  is  a  question  only  of  official  delin 
quency,  involving,  however,  the  life  of  a  great  State,  and  with 


720 


THOMAS    WILLIAMS 


it  the  liberties  of  a  great  people.  If  the  defendant  is  convicted, 
he  forfeits  only  his  official  place,  and  is,  perhaps,  disqualified 
from  taking  upon  himself  any  other,  which  will  be  no  very 
severe  infliction,  I  suppose,  unless  the  rebels  themselves  should 
be  so  fortunate  as  to  come  once  more  into  the  possession  of  the 
Government,  and  so  weak  as  to  trust  a  man  who  had  been 
untrue  to  those  who  had  honored  him  so  generously  before. 
The  accusers  here  are  forty  millions  of  freemen,  the  accused 
but  one,  who  claims  to  be  their  master;  the  issue,  whether  he 
shall  be  allowed  to  defy  their  will,  under  the  pretext  that  he  can 
govern  them  more  wisely  than  their  Congress,  and  to  take  the 
sword,  and,  in  effect,  the  purse  of  the  nation  into  his  own  hands. 
"On  such  an  issue,  and  before  such  a  tribunal,  I  should  not 
have  hesitated  to  stand  upon  the  plain,  unvarnished,  untechnical 
narration  of  the  facts,  leaving  the  question  as  to  their  effect 
upon  the  interests  of  the  nation,  and  their  bearing  upon  the 
fitness  of  Andrew  Johnson  to  hold  the  helm  of  this  great  State, 
to  be  decided  by  statesmen,  instead  of  turning  it  over  either  to 
the  quibbles  of  the  lawyer,  or  the  subtleties  of  the  casuist.  I 
have  no  patience  for  the  disquisitions  of  the  special  pleader  in 
a  case  like  this.  I  take  a  broader  view,  one  that,  I  think,  is 
fully  sustained  by  the  authorities,  and  that  is,  that  in  cases  such 
as  this,  the  safety  of  the  people,  which  is  the  supreme  law,  is 
the  true  rule,  and  the  only  rule  that  ought  to  govern.  I  do  not 
propose  to  reargue  that  question  now,  because  it  seems  to  me 
something  very  like  a  self-evident  proposition.  If  Andrew 
Johnson,  in  the  performance  of  the  duties  of  his  high  office, 
has  so  demeaned  himself  as  to  show  that  he  is  no  respecter  of 
the  laws;  that  he  defies  the  will  of  those  who  make  them;  and 
has  encouraged  disobedience  to  their  behests ;  that  he  has  fos 
tered  disaffection  and  discontent  throughout  the  lately  revolting 
States;  that  he  is  a  standing  obstacle  to  the  restoration  of  the 
peace  and  tranquillity  of  this  nation ;  that  he  claims  and  asserts 
the  power  of  a  dictator,  by  holding  one  of  your  great  depart 
ments  in  abeyance,  and  arrogating  to  himself  the  absolute  and 
uncontrollable  right  to  remove,  or  suspend  at  his  mere  will, 
every  executive  officer  of  the  Government,  on  the  land  and  on 
the  seas,  and  to  supply  their  places  without  your  agency,  if. 
for  any  or  all  of  these  reasons,  the  Republic  is  no  longer  safe 
in  his  hands ;  then  before  heaven  and  earth,  as  the  conservators 
of  the  nation's  weal,  as  the  trusted  guardians  of  its  most  inval 
uable  rights,  as  the  depositaries  of  the  most  sacred  and  exalted 
trust  that  has  ever  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  man,  it  becomes 
your  high  and  solemn  and  imperious  duty,  to  see  that  the 
Republic  shall  take  no  detriment,  and  to  speak  peace  to  a  dis- 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         721 

turbed  and  suffering  land,  by  removing  him  from  the  trust  he 
has  abused,  and  the  office  that  he  has  disgraced. 

"There  are  other  points  in  this  case  on  which  I  would  have 
desired  to  comment  if  time  and  strength  had  been  allowed  to  me 
for  that  purpose.  It  is  only  within  the  last  few  days  that  I 
have  entertained  the  hope  that  the  Senate  would  so  far  relax 
its  rule  as  to  enable  me  to  obtain  what,  under  the  circumstances, 
is  at  best  but  an  imperfect  hearing,  and  I  have  felt  it  necessary, 
therefore,  to  confine  myself  to  the  leading  arguments  connected 
with  the  removal  of  the  Secretary  of  War.  I  wish  it  to  be 
understood,  however,  that  I  do  not  underrate  the  value  of  such 
of  the  articles  as  I  have  been  obliged  to  pretermit.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  whole  case,  I  think,  of  graver  import  to  the 
nation  than  the  means  adopted  by  the  President  for  overthrow 
ing  the  legislative  power  by  fostering  disobedience  to  its  enact 
ments  and  bringing  its  accepted  organ  into  disrepute. 

"To  this  charge  there  are  three  answers.  The  first  is  the 
supposed  constitutional  right  to  the  use  of  an  unbridled  tongue, 
which  knows  no  difference  between  licentiousness  and  liberty. 
The  second  is  the  provocation  supposed  to  have  been  offered  in 
the  language  used  by  members  of  Congress  in  debate,  in  what 
seems  to  be  forgotten  to  be  their  constitutional  right,  which  not 
only  protects  them  from  challenge  anywhere,  but  gives  to  them 
the  right  freely  to  criticise  the  public  conduct  of  the  President, 
over  whom  the  law  has  placed  them,  by  making  him  amenable 
to  them  for  all  his  errors,  as  they  are  not  to  him.  The  third  is 
the  harmless  jest,  in  the  suggestion  of  a  law  to  regulate  the 
speech  and  manners  of  the  President.  If  his  counsel  can  find 
food  for  mirth  in  such  a  picture  as  the  evidence  has  shown, 
I  have  no  quarrel  with  their  taste.  The  President  may  enjoy 
the  joke,  perhaps,  himself.  I  do  not  think  he  can  afford  it,  but 
history  informs  us  that  Nero  fiddled  while  Rome  was  burning. 
Whether  he  does  or  not,  however,  I  trust  that  he  will  find  a 
censor  morum  here  as  stern  as  Cato,  in  the  judicial  opinion  of 
this  body,  that  the  man  who  so  outrages  public  decency,  either 
in  his  public  or  private  character,  in  the  pursuit  of  an  object 
so  treasonable  as  his,  has  demonstrated  his  unfitness  longer  to 
hold  the  high  place  of  a  Chief  Magistrate  of  a  free,  intelligent, 
and  moral  people.  I  take  leave  of  this  unpalatable  theme  by 
remarking  only  that  even  the  advocate  of  the  people  must  feel, 
as  a  child  of  the  Republic  himself,  while  he  is  compelled  to 
say  thus  much,  that  he  would  rather  have  turned  his  back,  if  it 
had  been  possible,  on  such  a  spectacle,  and  thrown  a  mantle  over 
the  nakedness  that  shames  us  all. 


^22  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

"And  now,  American  Senators,  Representatives,  and  judges 
upon  this  mighty  issue — joint  heirs  yourselves  of  that  great 
inheritance  of  liberty  that  has  descended  to  us  all,  and  has  just 
been  ransomed  and  repurchased  by  a  second  baptism  of  blood — 
a  few  words  more,  and  I  have  done. 

"If  the  responsibilities  of  the  lawyer  are  such  as  to  oppress 
him  with  their  weight  how  immeasurably  greater  are  your  own ! 
The  House  of  Representatives  has  done  its  duty.  The  rest  is 
now  with  you.  While  I  have  a  trust  in  that  God  who  went 
before  our  hosts,  as  He  did  before  the  armies  of  Israel,  through 
the  fiery  trials  that  led  so  many  of  the  flower  of  our  youth  to 
distant  graves  on  southern  battle-fields,  which  has  never  failed 
me  in  the  darkest  hour  of  the  nation's  agony,  I  cannot  but 
realize  that  He  has  placed  the  destinies  of  this  nation  in  your 
hands.  Your  decision  here  will  either  fall  upon  the  public  heart 
like  a  genial  sunbeam,  or  fling  a  disastrous  twilight,  full  of  the 
gloomiest  portents  of  coming  evil,  over  the  land.  Say  not  that 
I  exaggerate  the  issue  or  overcolor  the  picture.  This,  if  it 
were  true,  would  be  but  an  error  of  much  smaller  consequence 
than  the  perilous  mistake  of  underrating  its  importance.  It  is, 
indeed,  but  the  catastrophe  of  the  great  drama  which  began 
three  years  ago  with  murder — the  denouement  of  the  mortal 
struggle  between  the  power  that  makes  the  law  and  that  which 
executes  it — between  the  people  themselves,  and  the  chief  of 
their  own  servants,  who  now  undertakes  to  defy  their  will. 
What  is  your  verdict  to  decide?  Go  to  the  evidence,  to  the 
plea  of  the  President  himself,  and  to  the  defiant  answer  that  he 
sends  by  his  Tennessee  counsel,  and  they  will  give  you  the  true 
measure  of  the  interests  involved.  It  is  not  a  question  only 
whether  or  not  Andrew  Johnson  is  to  be  allowed  to  serve  as 
President  of  the  United  States  for  the  remainder  of  his  term. 
It  is  the  greater  question  whether  you  shall  hold  so  long  your 
selves  the  power  that  the  Constitution  gives  you  by  surrender 
ing  the  higher  one  to  him  of  suspending,  dismissing,  and 
appointing  at  his  will  and  pleasure  every  executive  officer  in 
the  Government  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  without  your 
consent,  and  if  possible  the  still  higher  one  of  disregarding  your 
laws  for  the  purpose  of  putting  those  laws  on  trial  before  they 
can  be  recognized.  He  has  made  this  issue  with  you  voluntarily 
and  defiantly.  If  you  acquit  him  upon  it,  you  affirm  all  his 
imperial  pretensions,  and  decide  that  no  amount  of  usurpation 
will  ever  bring  a  Chief  Magistrate  to  justice,  because  you  will 
have  laid  down  at  his  feet  your  own  high  dignity,  along  with 
your  double  function  of  legislators  and  advisers,  which  will  be 
followed  of  course  by  that  of  your  other,  I  will  not  say  greater, 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         723 

office  as  judges.  It  will  be  a  victory  over  you  and  us  which 
will  stir  the  heart  of  rebeldom  with  joy,  while  your  dead 
soldiers  will  turn  uneasily  in  their  graves;  a  victory  to  be 
celebrated  by  the  exultant  ascent  of  Andrew  Johnson  to  the 
Capitol,  like  the  conqueror  in  a  Roman  triumph,  dragging  not 
captive  kings,  but  a  captive  Senate  at  his  chariot  wheels,  and  to 
be  crowned  by  his  re-entry  into  the  possession  of  that  Depart 
ment  of  the  Government  over  which  this  great  battle  has  been 
fought.  It  is  shown  in  evidence  that  he  has  already  intimated 
that  he  would  wait  on  your  action  here  for  that  purpose.  But  is 
this  all?  Hug  not  to  your  bosoms,  I  entreat  you,  the  fond 
illusion  that  it  is  all  to  end  there.  It  is  but  the  beginning  of 
the  end.  If  his  pretensions  are  sustained,  the  next  head  that 
will  fall  as  a  propitiatory  offering  to  the  conquered  South,  will 
be  that  of  the  great  chief  who  humbled  the  pride  of  the 
chivalry  by  beating  down  its  serried  battalions  in  the  field,  and 
dragging  its  traitor  standard  in  the  dust;  to  be  followed  by  the 
return  of  the  rebel  officeholders,  and  a  general  convulsion  of 
the  State  which  shall  cast  loose  your  reconstruction  laws,  and 
deliver  over  the  whole  theater  of  past  disturbances  to  anarchy 
and  ruin.  Is  this  an  exaggerated  picture?  Look  to  the  history 
of  the  past  and  judge. 

"And,  now,  let  me  ask  you,  in  conclusion,  to  turn  your  eyes 
but  for  a  moment  to  the  other  side  of  the  question,  and  see 
what  are  to  be  the  consequences  of  a  conviction — of  such  a 
verdict  as,  I  think,  the  loyal  people  of  this  nation,  with  one 
united  voice,  demand  at  your  hands.  Do  you  shrink  from  the 
consequences  ?  Are  your  minds  disturbed  by  visions  of  impend 
ing  trouble?  The  nation  has  already,  within  a  few  short  years, 
been  called  to  mourn  the  loss  of  a  great  Chief  Magistrate, 
through  the  bloody  catastrophe  by  which  a  rebel  hand  has  been, 
unfortunately,  enabled  to  lift  this  man  into  his  place,  and  the  jar 
has  not  been  felt  as  the  mighty  machine  of  State,  freighted  with 
all  the  hopes  of  humanity,  moved  onward  in  its  high  career. 
This  nation  is  too  great  to  be  affected  seriously  by  the  loss  of 
any  one  man.  Are  your  hearts  softened  by  the  touching  appeals 
of  the  defendant's  counsel,  who  say  to  you  that  you  are  asked 
to  punish  this  man  only  for  his  divine  mercy,  his  exalted  charity 
to  others?  Mercy  to  whom?  To  the  murdered  Dostie  and  his 
fellows?  To  the  loyal  men  whose  carcases  were  piled  in  carts 
like  those  of  swine,  with  the  gore  dripping  from  the  wheels,  in 
that  holocaust  of  blood,  that  carnival  of  murder  which  was 
enacted  in  New  Orleans  ?  To  those  who  perished  in  that  second 
St.  Bartholomew  at  Memphis,  where  the  streets  were  reddened 
with  the  lurid  light  of  burning  dwellings,  and  the  loyal  occu- 


724  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

pants,  who  would  have  escaped,  were  cast  back  into  the  flames? 
The  divine  mercy  itself  is  seasoned  by  justice,  and  waits  only 
on  contrition.  This  is  no  place  for  such  emotions.  If  it  be, 
it  is  mercy  to  loyalty  and  innocence,  that  cries  aloud  for  the 
removal  of  this  bold,  bad  man.  If  it  be,  remember,  that  while 
your  loyal  brethren  are  falling  from  day  to  day  in  southern 
cities  by  the  assassin's  knife,  and  the  reports  of  the  Freedmen's 
Bureau  are  replete  with  horrors  at  which  the  very  cheek  turns 
pale,  your  judgment  here  stains  no  scaffold  with  the  blood  of  the 
victim.  No  lictor  waits  at  your  doors  to  execute  your  stern 
decree.  It  is  but  the  crown  that  falls,  while  none  but  the  his 
torian  stands  by  to  gibbet  the  delinquent  for  the  ages  that  are 
to  come.  No  wail  of  woe  will  disturb  your  slumbers,  unless  it 
comes  up  from  the  disaffected  and  disappointed  South,  which 
will  have  lost  the  foremost  of  its  friends.  Your  act  will  be  a 
spectacle  and  an  example  to  the  nations,  that  will  eclipse  even 
the  triumph  of  your  arms,  in  the  vindication  of  the  public  jus 
tice  in  the  sublimer  and  more  peaceful  triumph  of  the  law.  The 
eyes  of  an  expectant  people  are  upon  you.  You  have  but  to  do 
your  duty,  and  the  patriot  will  realize  that  the  good  genius  of 
the  nation,  the  angel  of  our  deliverance,  is  still  about  us  and 
around  us,  as  in  the  darkest  hour  of  the  nation's  trial." 

The  address  was  listened  to  with  the  closest  attention, 
and  at  its  close,  amid  all  the  congratulations  showered 
upon  him,  none  were  more  cordial  and  sincere  than  those 
from  his  chief  opponent,  William  M.  Evarts  of  New  York. 
The  Philadelphia  Press,  in  reprinting  it  the  next  day,  said, 
editorially:  "Mr.  Williams  has  long  been  recognized  as 
one  of  the  leading  lawyers  of  the  House,  and  this  reputa 
tion  has  been  fully  sustained.  His  argument  is  rigidly 
analytical,  and  seems  to  be  a  compend  of  crushing  truths 
rather  than  an  elaborate  discourse.  A  single  axiom  of 
law,  a  line  from  a  decision,  a  clause  from  the  Constitu 
tion,  is  often  made  to  turn  into  vapor  an  extended  argu 
ment  of  the  defense,  by  a  simple  antithesis.  There  are 
no  points  of  the  speech  stronger  or  more  convincing  than 
when  he  takes  hold  of  the  positions  of  the  President,  and 
argues  directly  from  them,  thus  showing  their  fallacy  by 
the  principle  of  rcductio  ad  absurdum.  The  avalanche  of 
precedents  and  interpretations  that  he  rolls  down  upon 
the  illogical  mole-hills  of  the  defense  crushes  them  into 
fragments.  His  peroration  is  beautiful,  rising,  as  it  does, 
into  a  sublimity  that  rivals  the  masterly  efforts  of  our 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         725 

greatest  orators."  In  quoting  from  it  the  Pittsburgh 
Daily  Commercial  said :  "The  argument  of  Manager 
Williams,  in  breadth,  compactness  and  eloquence  is  sur 
passed  by  no  effort  of  the  occasion."  The  Washington 
correspondent  of  the  Cincinnati  Gazette,  writing  just 
after  Mr.  Bingham's  opening  address,  admits  that  Mr. 
Williams  "is  probably  the  best  legal  scholar  on  the  board 
of  managers,"  but  adds,  "it  is  undeniable  that  the  weight 
of  legal  reputation  is  against  the  managers,  and  in 
favor  of  the  President's  counsel.  No  lawyer  in  the  United 
States  can  be  named,  with  the  approval  of  the  profession, 
before  Judge  Curtis  of  Boston.  Wm.  M.  Evarts  ranks 
with  Chas.  O'Conor,  James  T.  Brady  and  David  Dudley 
Field,  the  four  being  held  by  common  consent,  the  foremost 
lawyers  of  New  York.  Intense,  and  in  some  sense  just 
as  are  the  prejudices  against  Jer.  Black,  we  cannot,  in 
fairness,  deny  that  he  stands  with  the  foremost,  if  not 
himself,  the  foremost,  in  Pennsylvania.  Of  Henry  Stan- 
berry's  legal  reputation,  no  Ohioan,  most  of  all  no  Cin- 
cinnatian,  needs  to  be  informed.  There  are  no  men 
among  the  managers — there  are  no  men  even  in  the 
court — that  can  be  compared  with  these  four  for  reputa 
tion  as  great  lawyers  before  the  country."  Another 
Washington  correspondent — namely,  of  the  New  York 
Times — writing  on  May  2d,  naturally  thinks  Mr.  Evarts' 
speech  the  one  most  prominent,  as  many  others  did. 
"But,"  said  he,  "those  who  desire  to  read  all  that  is  truly 
interesting  and  truly  valuable  in  this  trial,  should  not 
omit  a  careful  perusal  of  the  speech  of  Manager  Williams. 
It  was  probably  prepared  with  more  care  than  any  other 
that  has  been  delivered,  and  while  it  abounds  in  strong 
legal  positions,  it  also  abounds  more  in  the  literature  of 
the  law  than  any  other.  Owing  to  an  unpleasant  voice, 
Mr.  Williams'  delivery  really  detracted  from  the  merit 
of  his  speech ;  but  it  will  stand  the  test  of  the  highest 
criticism,  as  a  literary  as  well  as  a  legal  production. 
*  *  *  By  the  time  Mr.  Bingham  concludes,  the 
country  will  be  convinced  that  the  degeneracy  of  our 
orators  is  not  so  great  as  has  been  supposed."  And 
nearly  thirty-five  years  later,  referring  to  this  event,  Con 
gressman  John  Dalzell,  in  a  public  address,  exclaimed : 


726  THOMAS   WILLIAMS 

"Grand  old  Thomas  Williams!  Allegheny  County  never 
had  an  abler  or  a  more  faithful  representative  in  the 
National  Congress.  He  was  one  of  the  committee  from 
the  House  of  Representatives  to  prosecute  on  its  part 
President  Johnson  in  the  impeachment  proceedings 
against  him,  and,  in  my  judgment,  his  argument  was  the 
ablest  of  all  made  on  his  side  of  the  case  in  that  remark 
able  trial."1 

On  Saturday,  May  i6th  (1868),  a  test  vote  was  made 
on  Article  XI,  which  really  contained  nearly  the  sub 
stance  of  the  whole  charge  against  the  President.  There 
were  54  Senators  voting,  and  the  result  was  a  majority 
of  16  in  favor  of  impeachment,  i.  e.,  35  to  IQ.2  To  secure 
impeachment,  however,  on  this  article  required  36,  i.  e., 
a  twro-thirds  vote  of  the  Senate.  Therefore,  although  the 
Senate  was  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  impeachment,  it 
lacked  just  one  vote  of  the  required  two-thirds.  And 
who  were  some  of  the  Senators  who  voted  for  impeach 
ment?  Conkling,  Cameron,  Edmunds,  Ferry,  Chandler, 
Freylinghuysen,  Harlan,  Morgan,  the  Morrills,  Morton, 
Sherman,  Simmer  and  men  of  that  class.  "Upon  this 
review  of  the  law  and  the  testimony,"  said  Senator  John 
Sherman,  in  his  filed  opinion,  "I  find  that  the  President  is 
guilty  of  a  high  misdemeanor  as  charged  in  the  first 
article  of  impeachment. — It  is  a  necessary  result  of  this 
opinion  that  I  also  find  him  guilty  of  high  misdemeanors  as 
charged  in  the  second,  third,  eighth  and  eleventh  articles 
of  impeachment."3  This  vote  made  further  action 
unnecessary,  and  on  May  26th  the  Court  of  Impeach 
ment  adjourned.  Andrew  Johnson  was  not  impeached, 
but  the  nature  of  the  verdict  made  it  plain  that  Congress 
had  won  a  moral  victory  in  their  contention  that,  with 
the  fall  of  the  Confederate  armies,  the  re-formation  of  the 
wrecked  States  was  the  business  of  the  legislative  and 
not  the  executive  branch  of  government. 

At  this  distance  of  time,  surely  the  younger  genera 
tion,  at  least,  should  be  able  to  preserve  the  historical 
attitude  in  viewing  that  great  contest ;  and  does  that  atti- 

1  Address  at  Carnegie  Music  Hall,  Pittsburgh,  on  May  23,  1902. 

2  Supplement  to  Congressional  Globe,   "Trial  of  the  President,"  2d  Session, 
Fortieth  Congress,  p.  412. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  452. 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         727 

tude  consist  altogether  in  speculating  on  what  might 
have  been?  Who  knows  what  might  have  been?  Is  it 
important  what  might  have  been,  even  if  it  could  be 
known?  The  fact  remains  that  there  was  a  great  mili 
tary  conflict,  covering  four  years,  before  one  of  the  con 
tending  hosts  was  exhausted ;  that  there  was  another 
great  conflict,  this  time  civil,  covering  at  least  an  equal 
period — and  both  conflicts  were,  in  their  ultimate  aim, 
practically  the  same — namely,  preserving  the  Constitu 
tion  and  liberty  under  it  for  a  great  mass  of  human 
beings,  and  arose  from  various  causes;  for  probably  no  one 
would  deny  that  however  President  Lincoln  might  hold 
before  himself  the  single  aim  of  preserving  the  Consti 
tution,  with  or  without  slavery,  his  armies  were  in  the 
first  instance  and  his  people  in  the  second  instance, 
through  their  representatives,  fighting  for  the  Consti 
tution  without  slavery  alone.  "Without  slavery,"  to  the 
victorious  side,  came  to  mean  also  "with  suffrage;" 
although  why  it  should  have,  in  this  particular  instance, 
when  it  did  not  mean  so  for  the  Indian,  nor  for  that 
highly  intelligent  half  of  population — women,  might  not 
be  clear  to  the  observer,  unless  he  recalled  that  Indians 
were  considered  a  savage  people,  and  the  "rights"  of  women 
had  not  found  its  place  in  the  civilized  consciousness  as 
had  the  rights  of  man.1  The  negro  was  considered  a 
man  of  peace,  accustomed  to  our  form  of  civilization ; 
ergo,  fit  for  suffrage,  because  the  great  mass  of  the  north 
ern  States  had  practically  unqualified  manhood  suffrage 
at  that  time.  If  the  element  especially  peculiar  to  the 
negro  situation  then,  if  not  now,  namely,  the  vast  relative 
proportions  and  ignorance  of  the  newly  liberated  race, 
gained  entrance  into  the  northern  consciousness  and 
made  them  hesitate  as  to  the  applicability  of  universal 
manhood  suffrage  then,  the  course  of  some  of  the  South 
in  the  forced-labor  laws,  the  alarms  raised  by  the 
contest  and  the  fall  of  Lincoln  drove  it  out.  The  result 
was  conflict — war,  civil  war,  in  a  very  true  sense.  Let  it 
be  admitted  that  Johnson  was  following  Lincoln's  one- 

1  The  "savagery"  of  the  Indian  was  no  doubt  due  in  part  to  his  objection 
to  being  dispossessed  of  his  country  by  a  foreign  civilized  race  who  wanted  to 
cultivate  it — but,  however  that  may  be,  the  conflict  of  ideas  and  civilizations  is 
an  established  fact  of  history. 


728  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

time  proposed  plans,  had  not  Lincoln  changed  his  plans 
more  than  once  at  the  demands  of  the  Northern  people? 
And,  in  the  temper  of  the  Northern  people  at  that  time, 
is  there  any  doubt  he  would  have  been  compelled  to,  if 
he  had  not  anticipated,  change  them  again?  The  dom 
inant  half  of  the  American  people,  whose  political  life  had 
been  so  long  scourged  by  the  negro  question,  were 
undoubtedly  determined  to  settle  it  once  for  all,  if  that 
were  possible.  Whether  they  used  greater  wisdom  in 
the  operation  than  did  the  southern  people  or  than  would 
a  generation  who  did  not  have  the  responsibility,  is  a 
speculative  question  that  could  only  be  settled  by  allow 
ing  either  one  to  experiment  with  the  same  problem. 
The  first  half  of  the  great  War  of  the  Sixties  was  a  war 
of  military  forces,  the  second  half  a  conflict  of  ideas — 
and  the  latter  is  always  attended  with  the  greater  bitter 
ness — and  were  not  the  problems  of  those  on  both  sides, 
in  this  second  half,  immeasurably  greater  and  more  deli 
cate,  in  some  respects,  than  those  in  the  first?  That  they 
were,  one  can  instantly  see  by  merely  recalling  that  the 
questions  of  the  first  were  physical  ones  and  were  settled  ; 
and  also  by  merely  intimating  that  no  small  element, 
either  North  or  South,  count  the  problems  of  the  second 
half  settled,  even  yet ;  and  the  efforts  of  the  South  to  abide 
by  the  Constitution  and  still  eliminate  the  mass  of  igno 
rant  vote,  and  the  ill-concealed  resentment  in  the  rest  of 
the  country  at  the  existence  of  unequal  representation, 
abundantly  testify  to  it.  And  when  a  whole  generation 
has  been  unable  to  settle  a  question,  would  it  not  well 
become  that  generation  to  glow  with  warmest  apprecia 
tion  of  the  courageous  statesmen  who  attacked  the  prob 
lem  and  did  their  part  toward  its  solution  at  its  most 
critical  period?  Will  any  historian  say  other  than  that 
it  is  idle  to  treat  the  impeachment  alone  and  separate 
from  the  great  problems  of  which  it  was  a  mere  part — 
mere  incident  in  what  was  essentially  civil  war?  Mr. 
Williams  and  his  colleagues  so  looked  upon  it.  They 
undoubtedly  represented  the  majority  of  the  American 
people  at  the  time,  both  as  to  what  was  proposed  and,  per 
haps,  as  to  the  limitations  of  American  knowledge  as  to 
the  operation  of  a  great  mass  of  ignorant  suffrage.  That 


A  MANAGER  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT         729 

their  aims  were  in  line,  however,  with  the  best  thought 
and  general  conviction  of  the  American  people,  if  not, 
indeed,  of  the  world  itself,  is  it  possible  for  one,  with  a 
truly  historical  spirit,  to  doubt?  He  now  again  held  one 
of  those  permanent  principles  which  are  not  of  hasty 
fruitage — that  require  time  for  maturity  and  realization. 
After  a  leave  of  absence,  beginning  May  29th,  and  due 
to  the  condition  of  his  health  before  mentioned,  he 
returned,  and  on  July  7th,  on  his  own  initiative,  presented 
additional  articles  of  impeachment.  ''Although  agreeing 
that  the  case  presented  to  the  Senate,  made  up  as  it  was 
of  facts  that  were  not  open  to  dispute,  was  so  entirely 
adequate  as  to  have  insured  a  conviction  before  any  bench 
of  judges  learned  in  the  law,  it  did  not  strike  me  as  wise  to 
leave  the  impeachment  of  the  House  against  so  high 
an  officer,  with  all  the  power  and  all  the  prestige  of  his 
place,  to  rest  before  a  tribunal,  compounded  of  such 
heterogeneous  elements,  upon  any  questions  of  law  that 
afforded  so  large  a  scope  for  the  ingenuity  of  professional 
men,  when  there  was,  as  I  think,  another  case  in  reserve, 
in  which  the  offense  was  at  least  equally  heinous,  and  the 
facts  equally  unquestionable,  and  where  the  law  was  so  trans 
parent  that  no.  false  logic  could  darken  counsel,  or  run 
away  with  the  understanding  of  the  judge,  and  no  man, 
whether  lawyer  or  layman,  could  frame  an  apology  for 
mistake.  If  it  was  important  to  this  nation  to  convict  and 
remove  a  President  who  is  admitted  even  by  his  apolo 
gists  in  the  Senate  to  be  utterly  unfit  for  the  high  place 
which  he  occupies,  it  was  equally  important  that  no 
material  part  of  his  manifold  offenses  should  be  over 
looked."  The  articles  all  had  to  do  with  the  usurpation 
of  power  over  various  kinds  of  southern  property,  which, 
it  was  contended,  should  be  only  in  the  power  of  Congress 
to  dispose  of,  and  other  infractions  of  the  law  as  con 
tended  by  Congress :  "Usurpation  of  power  in  every  pos 
sible  form  that  tyranny  could  have  invented  or  imagined. 
Usurpation  in  legislating  without  the  consent  of  Con 
gress  for  the  erection  of  governments  by  proclamation, 
and  claiming  for  those  proclamations  the  force  of  law ; 
usurpation  in  raising  moneys  to  a  vast  amount,  without 
the  consent  of  Congress,  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining 


730 


THOMAS    WILLIAMS 


those  governments  by  the  appropriation  of  the  public 
property  and  the  exercise  of  the  taxing  power;  usurpation 
in  creating-  offices  unknown  to  the  law,  and  filling  them 
with  the  enemies  of  the  government,  and  paying  those 
enemies  out  of  appropriations  made  by  law  for  other  pur 
poses  ;  usurpation  in  returning  millions  of  captured  prop 
erty  belonging  to  the  Government  to  the  original  pro 
prietors,  without  the  consent  or  even  the  knowledge  of 
Congress,  and  without  any  consideration  whatever ;  usur 
pation  and  fraud  in  transferring,  by  a  pretended  private 
sale  to  the  same  individuals,  other  millions  of  Govern 
ment  property  on  long  terms  of  credit  and  without 
security,  and  then  postponing  the  payment  for  the  pur 
pose  of  securing  his  own  private  debt;  usurpation  in 
refunding  to  rebels  large  sums  of  money  arising  from 
sales  of  captured  and  abandoned  property  directed  by  law 
to  be  paid  into  the  Treasury;  usurpation  in  misusing  and 
abusing  the  pardoning  power  to  purchase  the  co-opera 
tion  of  the  leading  rebels  in  his  unlawful  plans  of  recon 
struction  ;  usurpation  in  not  only  refusing  to  enforce  the 
laws  enacted  to  put  down  the  rebellion,  but  absolutely 
preventing  their  execution  by  arresting  the  process  of  the 
courts,  and  turning  public  malefactors  loose  without 
even  a  pardon ;  usurpation  in  the  abuse  of  the  appointing 
power  by  the  removal  of  meritorious  officers,  and  filling 
their  places,  without  the  consent  of  the  Senate,  with  his 
own  minions  in  aid  of  his  unlawful  purpose  of  maintain 
ing  his  own  governments  and  forcing  them  into  the 
Union  against  the  will  of  the  loyal  people  ;  and  to  crown 
all,  usurpation  the  most  insolent  and  high-handed  in  the 
exercise  of  a  dispensing  power  over  the  laws  enacted  to 
carry  out  the  policy  of  Congress,  by  appointing  rebels  to 
office  in  open  defiance  thereof,  and  substituting  his  own 
will  for  that  of  the  law-maker  himself!"  He  said  he  did 
not  intend  to  say  that  the  friends  of  various  candidates 
had  feared  the  temporary  elevation  of  Mr.  Wade;  "it 
would  not  be,  perhaps,  considered  exactly  parliamen 
tary.''  He  said  it  was  not  too  late,  for  he  claimed  that  the 
cause  was  still  depending  on  an  indefinite  adjournment. 
"If  it  were  the  last  day  of  that  term,"  and  here  one  may 
see  the  propagandist  in  the  advocate,  "the  example  alone 


BENJAMIN   FRANK IJN  \VADK 

Of  Ohio,   who,   as   President   of  the   Seriate,   would   have  succeeded   Andrew 
Johnson  had  the  impeachment  been  successful.      Halftone  of  a  con 
temporary   photograph   by   Brady,   negative   in    posses 
sion    of    Iy.    C.    Handy,   Washington,    D.   C. 


A    MANAGER    OF    THE    IMPEACHMENT  73 1 

would  be  of  inestimable  value  to  the  nation,  in  the  mere 
vindication  of  public  justice,  and  the  admonition  it  will 
furnish  to  those  who  are  to  come  after  him."  He  finished 
by  saying:  "'My  duty  is  thus  performed.  I  leave  the  case 
with  this  house  and  Providence."1 

The  Republicans  had  nominated  General  Grant  and 
declared  for  the  reconstruction  policy;  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  was  declared  in  force  during  this  month  of 
July,  and,  Mr.  Williams'  health  growing  constantly  worse, 
he  was  granted  indefinite  leave  of  absence  on  account  of 
it  on  July  22d,  three  days  before  Congress  adjourned.2 
That  condition  made  it  necessary  for  a  further  leave  of 
absence  on  December  i6th,  after  the  assembling  of  the 
third  session,  and  although  he  was  present  occasionally, 
and  was  present  on  the  last  day  of  the  session,  March  3d 
(1869),  ms  work  in  Congress  had  practically  come  to  a 
close  during  the  previous  session.  With  the  close  of  the 
Fortieth  Congress,  Mr.  Williams  retired  from  official  life, 
and  even  gave  up  a  large  share  of  his  professional  activi 
ties.  The  policies  for  which  he  stood  while  in  Congress 
had  again  been  upheld  by  the  people,  and  the  inaugura 
tion  of  General  Grant  removed  the  difficulties  due  to  the 
conflicts  with  the  policy  of  his  predecessor,  Andrew 
Johnson  of  Tennessee.3 


1  Congressional  Globe,  Part  5  and  appendix,  2d  Session,  Fortieth  Congress, 
p.  418. 

-  In  Boutwell's  "Reminiscences  of  Sixty  Years  in  Public  Affairs,"  Vol.  II, 
p.  41,  he  says  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  was  prepared  by  Conkling,  Williams 
and  himself. 

8  Many  of  his  friends  pressed  his  name  for  a  foreign  mission  at  some 
European  capital  late  in  1869,  and  he  was  even  mentioned  for  the  Court  of  St. 
James,  but  the  condition  of  his  health  no  doubt  prevented  aggressive  effort. 
Letters  among  the  Williams  papers. 

Letters  of  Judge  Buffington,  who  was  chairman  of  the  Republican  Execu 
tive  Committee  in  1868,  show  that  they  greatly  desired  Mr.  Williams  to  con 
tinue  in  Congress.  Other  letters  also  show  that  some  opponents  of  the  impeach 
ment  sought  to  prevent  Mr.  Williams'  candidacy  again. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

CLOSING  YEARS 
1869-72 

With  the  summer  days  of  1869,  Mr.  Williams  had 
reached  the  age  of  three-score-and-three  years,  and 
whether  his  recent  illnesses  and  that  always  threatening 
organ,  his  heart,  warned  him  that  the  years  of  greater 
leisure  had  arrived,  or  whether  his  well-known  inclina 
tion  to  the  joys  of  the  study  and  the  library  led  him  to 
deliberately  choose  these  closing  years  chiefly  for  that 
lofty  reflection  and  research  for  which  this  ripe  period  is 
so  truly  fitting,  cannot  be  known.  That  these  three 
remaining  years  were  thus  increasingly  occupied,  how 
ever,  with  only  an  occasional  public  utterance,  either  by 
pen  or  voice,  on  vital  questions  of  the  hour  in  which  he 
took  so  much  interest,  and  with  only  an  occasional 
appearance  at  the  bar,  even  down  to  his  final  farewell  to 
it  in  the  Huidekoper  case,  is  well  known  to  all  who  were 
accustomed  to  the  sight  of  his  venerable  figure  upon  the 
streets  of  Pittsburgh,  or  his  beloved  Allegheny  City, 
which  was  his  home  in  these  closing  years.1  It  is  signifi 
cant  that  the  most  notable  instance  of  emergence  from 
this  retirement  was  his  long  account  of  the  municipal 
railway  contest,  heretofore  noticed,  which  appeared  almost 
exactly  a  year  before  his  death.2 

The  end  came  after  a  short  illness  from  neuralgia  of 
the  heart  on  Thursday  morning,  June  6,  1872,  in  his 

1  No.    ii    Stockton   avenue,    Allegheny,   was   his   home   at   this   time.      It   is 
interesting  to  note,  in  a  letter  of  November  26,  1871,  from  Mr.  Williams  while 
visiting   \Yilliam   Axon   Stokes,   at   Philadelphia,   that    he    seriously     considered 
making   his   home   in   the   latter   city.      It   is   also   characteristic   of   his   love   for 
Cicero   that   for   some  years   before   he   went   to    Congress   he   was   working   out 
his   plans  for  a  country  seat  at  Hazelwood,   to   be   known   as   "Tusculum,"   the 
seat    of   the    great    Latin   orator's   villa,    "Tusculanum."     He   never    completed 
more  than  the  lodge  at  the  gateway,  however. 

2  The  Pittsburgh  Commercial  of  September  7,   1871,   which  is    given    entire 
at  p.  375- 

732 


CLOSING    YEARS  733 

sixty-sixth  year.1  That  evening  the  Chronicle  said : 
''Thus  another  of  the  splendid  list  of  names  which  gave 
the  bar  of  Pittsburgh  such  a  wide  reputation  in  the  last 
thirty  years,  and  which  included  such  distinguished  men 
as  Walter  Forward,  Samuel  Black,  Edwin  M.  Stanton, 
and  William  Wilkins,  is  gone  from  among  us,  a  towering 
land-mark  in  the  history  of  our  city,  and  a  beacon  light 
to  the  emulous  young  lawyers  of  generations  to  come." 
The  next  morning  the  Gazette  said,  with  great  warmth  of 
feeling:  "This  man  of  deep  and  varied  learning,  of  great 
professional  eminence,  distinguished  in  the  Councils  of 
the  State  and  of  the  United  States,  whose  speeches  in 
Congress  during  and  since  the  war  were  spoken  of  by 
Senators,  Representatives  and  Judges,  as  Websterian  in 
diction,  power  and  statesmanship;  this  man  of  almost 
matchless  intellect,  of  incorruptible  integrity,  faithful  to 
all  trusts  whether  of  client  or  constitution,  is  no  more." 
The  Dispatch,  in  a  sketch  appearing  at  the  same  time, 
voiced  the  following — to  quote  a  single  paragraph :  "Mr. 
Williams  served  two  sessions  in  Congress,  and  while 
there  obtained  national  distinction  as  one  of  the  prose 
cutors  of  President  Johnson  during  the  impeachment 
trial.  His  speech  on  that  occasion  was  a  remarkable 
effort,  and  though  characterized  by  many  of  its  critics  as 
turgid  and  ineffective,  was  nevertheless  a  production  dis 
tinguished  by  masterly  language  and  argumentative 
vigor.  Deceased  was  a  man  learned  in  literature.  He 
was  a  fine  linguist,  a  great  reader,  a  ready  and  elegant 
writer.  Few  men  leave  such  extensive  or  judiciously 

1  Mrs.  Williams  and  the  following  children  survived  him,  her  death 
occurring  in  Philadelphia,  March  9,  1887:  Major  Thomas,  Jr.,  Alexander 
Reynolds,  Margaret  Donaldson,  Agnes  (Pemberton),  Sarah  D.,  Mary  and 
Captain  Richard  Algernon.  Major  Thomas  Williams,  who  died  November 
11,  1884,  was  a  graduate  of  Miami  University  at  Oxford,  Ohio,  and  was  admit 
ted  to  the  bar.  At  the  opening  of  the  war  he  was  made  First  Lieutenant  of 
the  Fifth  United  States  Artillery  and  assigned  to  the  staff  of  General  McDow 
ell.  He  was  promoted  Captain  and  at  the  battle  of  Bull  Run  he  was  brevetted 
Major  for  gallant  conduct.  Captain  Richard  A.  Williams,  who  died  in  New 
York,  January  19,  1890,  was  a  West  Point  graduate  in  the  Eighth  United 
States  Cavalry.  He  won  his  promotion  in  the  Indian  campaigns.  Mrs.  Pem 
berton,  whose  death  occurred  January  25,  1900,  was  the  wife  of  Henry  Pem 
berton,  a  distinguished  chemist  of  Philadelphia,  member  of  the  American 
Philosophical  Society  and  author  of  "The  Path  of  Evolution  Through  Ancient 
Thought  and  Modern  Science"  (1903).  Mr.  Pemberton  is  a  brother  of  the 
late  Confederate  General  John  C.  Pemberton.  The  surviving  children  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Pemberton,  Mrs.  Quincy  A.  Shaw,  Jr.,  who  is  the  wife  of  a  grandson 
of  the  late  distinguished  scientist,  Louis  Agassiz,  and  Dr.  Ralph  Pemberton, 
together  with  Miss  Virginia  S.,  daughter  of  Alexander  R.  Williams,  are  the 
only  remaining  grandchildren  of  Mr.  Williams. 


734 


THOMAS    WILLIAMS 


selected  libraries  as  that  which  is  numbered  among  the 
assets  of  deceased.  He  delighted  in  books  of  travel,  but 
abhorred  novels,  or  fiction  in  any  form.1  Mr.  Williams' 
last  professional  engagement  was  as  counsel  in  the  Stitt- 
Huidekoper  case,  less  than  a  year  ago  before  the  United 
States  Circuit  Court.  To  the  last  he  was  identified  more 
or  less  with  politics,  being  one  of  the  candidates  before 
the  late  Republican  Convention  for  delegate  to  the  Con 
stitutional  Convention,  in  which  contest  he  was  defeated 
— to  the  end  that  party  drummers  with  no  knowledge  of 
law  or  pretensions  to  it,  be  provided  with  a  place.  Though 
the  course  of  deceased  was  betimes  at  variance  with  pub 
lic  opinion,  and  not  infrequently  adverse  to  the  public 
interests  [as  the  Dispatch  writer,  who  was  evidently  a 
writer  of  briefs  also,  no  doubt  believed]  he  was  recog 
nized  as  an  able  man,  and  his  death  will  be  sincerely 
regretted." 

The  courts  had  all  adjourned  out  of  respect,  and  on 
the  same  day  (Friday)  all  the  leading  members  of  the 
legal  profession  had  a  meeting,  presided  over  by  Hon. 
Moses  Hampton,  with  Hon.  James  P.  Sterrett,  Hon.  E. 
H.  Stowe,  Hon.  F.  H.  Collier,  Hon.  John  W.  Kirkpatrick, 
James  I.  Kuhn,  Robert  Woods,  Thomas  MacConnell  and 
B.  M.  Smith  as  vice-presidents.  Mr.  Kuhn,  who  had  once 
been  a  partner  of  Mr.  Williams,  officially  announced  his 
death,  and  "gave  a  short  but  graphic  sketch  of  his  life, 
his  career  as  a  lawyer  and  services  as  a  public  man.2  He 
referred  to  his  extensive  and  varied  learning ;  rating  him 
not  only  as  a  leading  lawyer,  just  and  upright  in  the  dis 
charge  of  his  duties,  but  a  scholar  of  profound  learning — 
well  versed  in  polite  literature,  an  accomplished  Latin, 
Greek  and  French  linguist.  He  paid  a  glowing  tribute  to 
his  purity  of  life,  kindness  of  heart,  and  zeal  in  the  pur- 

1  Mr.  Williams'  love  for  history  is  indicated  in  some  degree  by  the  fact  that 
his  library  contained  about  400  volumes  on  that  subject  alone.  It  is  also 
suggestive  to  know  that  there  were  over  200  volumes  on  voyages  and  travels, 
nearly  the  same  on  religion  and  theology,  while  it  might  readily  be  sur 
mised  that  he  would  have  above  100  on  poetry  and  the  drama  and  a  like  number 
on  rhetoric  and  belles  lettres,  or  nearly  th'at  number  on  ethics  and  politics, 
which  he  classes  together.  The  possession  of  about  200  volumes  of  the  best 
fiction,  wit  and  humor  would  not  indicate  that  he  "abhorred"  fiction  in  any 
form  hardly.  The  number  of  volumes  do  not,  however,  make  the  impression 
on  one  that  their  high  character  do,  of  course,  and  the  really  significant  fact 
about  it  all  is  that  he  made  great  books  his  companions. 

-  In  the  November  number  of  the  Nci*.'  Jersey  Laiv  Journal,  1904,  p.  351,  a 
sketch  of  General  Samuel  D.  Oliphant  of  Trenton,  1824-1904,  states  that  he 
also  was  at  one  time  a  partner  of  Mr.  Williams. 


3P3TX3  33333  W3  3A32. 


!^; 


REvSOIvUTlON.S  Ol-   THK  PITT.SBUKCiH   I5AR 
Halftone  of  original  in  possession  of  the  Misses  Williams,  Philadelphia 


CLOSING    YEARS  735 

suit  of  his  profession.  In  conclusion  he  moved  that  a 
committee  on  resolutions  be  appointed."1  Those  chosen 
were  John  H.  Hampton,  Thomas  M.  Marshall,  M.  W. 
Acheson,  George  Shiras,  Jr.  and  A.  M.  Brown — some  of 
the  most  distinguished  names  known  to  the  profession. 
The  resolutions  adopted  were  as  follows : 

"WHEREAS,  The  Pittsburgh  Bar  have  learned  with  sincere 
sorrow  of  the  sudden  demise  of  the  Hon.  Thomas  Williams,  and 
are  desirous  as  a  body  to  pay  a  proper  tribute  to  his  memory  as 
one  of  its  most  worthy  and  distinguished  members,  therefore, 
in  token  of  its  purpose  publicly  to  honor  his  name  as  an  eminent 
lawyer,  a  good  citizen  and  a  cherished  friend. 

"Resolved,  That  his  purity  in  all  the  relations  of  private 
life,  his  unsullied  reputation  as  a  lawyer,  his  unassailed  integrity 
as  a  public  servant  for  many  years  in  the  discharge  of  responsi 
ble  duties,  alike  entitle  him  to  the  commendation  of  his  brethren 
of  the  Bar,  the  grateful  recollection  of  the  community  and  a 
place  in  history  among  the  statesmen  of  his  native  State  and 
this  Nation. 

"Resolved,  That  his  long  and  successful  career  at  the  bar 
was  full  of  honor,  shedding  lustre  upon  the  profession  he 
adorned  by  his  great  and  varied  learning,  his  untiring  study, 
and  a  scrupulous  regard  for  its  high  and  ennobling  duties. 

"Resolved,  That  in  him  were  united  an  exact  knowledge  of 
the  law,  scholarly  acquirements  and  literary  tastes  of  a  high 
order,  and  a  conceded  ability  to  both  write  and  speak  with  a 
rare  beauty  and  masterly  power  seldom  falling  to  the  lot  of  any 
man,  all  combining  to  make  him  greatly  to  be  admired  and  long 
remembered. 

"Resolved,  That  whether  considered  as  a  lawyer,  a  states 
man,  or  a  citizen,  his  life,  now  closed,  is  worthy  of  emulation; 
and  may  hereafter  be  fitly  spoken  of  by  his  kindred  and  friends 
as  full  of  honor,  goodness  and  truth,  and  his  tomb  as  holding 
imperishably  even  in  death,  one  of  Fame's  noblest  sons. 

"Resolved,  That  we  deeply  sympathize  with  his  bereaved 
family  in  this  the  hour  of  their  sore  affliction,  and  kindly  tender 
them  our  condolence  in  the  loss  of  an  affectionate  husband,  an 
indulgent  father,  and  a  beloved  brother. 

"Resolved,  That  the  Bar  in  a  body  proceed  from  the  Court 
House  to  the  family  residence,  to  attend  the  funeral  on  Satur- 

1  The   Gazette  of  July  8,    1872. 


736  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

day,  and  that  a  committee  of  three  be  appointed  to  present  a 
copy  of  these  resolutions  to  the  family. 

"Resolved,  That  the  several  courts  of  this  county  be 
requested  by  the  same  committee  to  order  the  proceedings  of  this 
meeting  to  be  spread  at  length  on  their  minutes."1 

On  Saturday  morning  the  Grand  Jury  adjourned  out 
of  respect,  after  passing  resolutions,  in  which  they  said: 
"In  the  death  of  this  estimable  citizen  we  have  lost  a 
valued  friend."  In  the  United  States  District  Court, 
George  Shiras,  Esq.,  announced  his  decease,  and,  after  a 
review  of  his  life  and  also  an  address  by  Judge  McCand- 
less,  who  spoke  at  length  upon  the  virtues  of  Mr.  Wil 
liams,  of  both  head  and  heart,  the  court  also  adjourned 
out  of  respect  to  his  memory.  At  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  after  services  conducted  by  Rev.  Dr.  Jacobus, 
at  the  residence,  his  remains,  accompanied  by  Messrs. 
John  Morrison,  Thomas  M.  Howe,  Judge  McCandless, 
Judge  Hampton,  Judge  Veech,  Thomas  MacConnell,  Jas. 
I.  Kuhn,  Wm.  M.  Darlington,  S.  H.  Geyer,  A.  S.  Bell, 
James  O'Hara  and  Josiah  King,  as  pallbearers,  and  the 
judges  and  attorneys  of  the  several  courts  in  a  body  on 
foot,  accompanied  the  carriages  to  the  intersections 
of  Penn  and  Sixth  streets,  where  they  stood  uncov 
ered  while  the  procession  passed,  and  then  retired. 
The  services  at  the  tomb  in  Allegheny  County,  Pitts 
burgh,  were  conducted  by  Rev.  Dr.  Preston,  and  all  that 
was  mortal  of  Thomas  Williams  was  laid  to  rest.2 

On  Monday  (June  10,  1872)  there  appeared  in  the 
Pittsburgh  Post,  probably  the  most  notable  and  most 
widely  copied  editorial  on  Mr.  Williams  that  appeared. 
It  was  all  the  more  notable,  because  the  Post  had  been 
one  of  his  most  distinguished  opponents  in  public  life. 
"Not  less  sincerely,"  it  began,  "than  those  who  during 
his  life  were  his  personal  and  political  friends,  do  we 
deplore  the  calamity  which  this  community  has  sus 
tained  in  the  death  of  Mr.  Williams. — He  was  the  last  of 
the  class  of  thoroughbred  old  fashioned  lawyers,  who 

*A  photographic  reproduction  of  the  engrossed  resolutions  appears  here 
with. 

2  Their  pastor,  the  Rev.  Dr.  S.  F.  Scovel,  of  the  First  Presbyterian 
Church,  was  abroad  at  the  time. 


CLOSING    YEARS  737 

early  gave  to  the  Bar  of  Western  Pennsylvania  the  lus 
tre  of  powerful  intellect,  deep  learning,  unflinching 
fidelity  and  boundless  devotion.  And  it  may  truly  be  said 
that  Mr.  Williams  was  at  least  the  equal  of  the  brightest 
and  best  of  this  class. — For  many  years  he  was  the  lead 
ing  counsel  in  the  most  important  causes,  especially  in 
the  Supreme  Court.  And  the  published  reports  of  many 
of  his  arguments  exhibit  legal  learning  and  powerful 
reasoning  which  will  long  command  the  respect  of  the 
profession.  But  forensic  fame  is  in  its  nature  evanescent. 
The  voice  of  the  advocate,  of  immense  importance  at  the 
moment,  soon  becomes,  (in  the  popular  mind)  but  the 
vague  traditions  of  indefinite  power. — Mr.  Williams,  in 
another  sphere  has  left  a  permanent  impress  upon  his 
country.  He  was  a  leader  amongst  those  who  nearly 
forty  years  ago  established  as  the  permanent  policy  of 
Pennsylvania  protection  to  American  industry.  His 
numerous  speeches  on  the  tariff,  especially  when  a  candi 
date  in  1838  for  the  State  Senate  were  recognized  at  the 
time  as  the  most  luminous  and  convincing,  and  although 
these  speeches  may  have  been  generally  forgotten,  their 
effect  remains,  and  it  is  apparent  in  subsequent  legislation. 
—He  was  the  author  of  the  Tenure-of-Office  bill,  and  the 
argument  by  which  he  supported  it,  is  conclusive  evi 
dence  that  he  was  a  great  constitutional  lawyer. — The 
amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  Pennsylvania  prohibit 
ing  municipal  subscriptions  to  corporations  was  the  sole 
work  of  Williams.  From  the  beginning  he  had  opposed 
all  such  subscriptions  as  illegal  and  impolitic,  and  subse 
quently  disputed  their  validity.  Throughout  all  the  con 
troversies  on  this  subject  Mr.  Williams  proved  his  con 
sistency  and  integrity.  He  alone  could  have  raised  these 
questions  and  conducted  this  contest,  for  he  alone  could 
have  brought  to  it  such  aid  of  personal  purity,  intellectual 
power  and  unflinching  courage.  The  constitutional 
amendment  may  fairly  be  considered  the  popular 
approval  of  his  policy. 

"At  the  commencement  of  the  rebellion,"  the  Post 
continues,  "Mr.  Williams  instantly  and  ardently  advo 
cated  the  most  vigorous  measures.  His  voice  helped  to 
arouse  the  people  of  Pennsylvania  to  the  magnitude  of 


738  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

the  clanger  and  the  immense  efforts  necessary  to  repel 
it,  and  its  effect  was  soon  apparent  in  the  men  and  money 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Federal  Government. — The 
impeachment  of  President  Johnson  placed  Mr.  Williams 
as  one  of  the  managers  in  a  conspicuous  National  posi 
tion  where  he  maintained  and  enhanced  the  reputation 
which  he  had  already  obtained  in  a  more  limited  sphere — 
of  his  effort  in  that  case — it  is  enough  to  say  that  the 
leading  counsel  of  the  President  pronounced  it  the  ablest 
argument  of  the  ablest  lawyer  concerned  against  him. — 
In  municipal  affairs  Mr.  Williams  always  took  a  deep 
interest  and  an  active  part.  His  tendencies  were  decidedly 
conservative,  and  he  vigorously  resisted  all  schemes 
which  involved  needless  expenditures,  and  especially 
those  in  which  there  was  a  suspicion  of  public  plunder. — 
He  was  an  accomplished  scholar.  His  studies  embraced 
almost  the  entire  range  of  human  knowledge.  His  intel 
lectual  thirst  was  such  that,  only  the  year  before  his  death 
he  acquired  a  new  language,  that  he  might  read  German 
works  in  the  original.  His  pen  was  prolific,  and  we  yet 
hope  that  his  miscellaneous  writings  may  be  collected 
and  placed  in  permanent  form.  We  can  refer  but  to  one 
of  them — the  eulogium  delivered  before  the  Senate  and 
House  of  Representatives  of  Pennsylvania  on  President 
Harrison,  which  is  justly  placed  by  the  side  of  Lee's 
eulogium  on  Washington.  Mr.  Williams'  character  was 
remarkable  in  this,  that  with  immense  intellectual  powder, 
he  often  exhibited  a  child-like  credulity  and  simplicity. 
Perfectly  pure  himself  he  was  liable  to  be  the  victim  of 
misplaced  confidence.  The  consequence  was  that  his 
political  position  was  sometimes  successfully  assailed  by 
men  infinitely  his  inferiors.  His  sensitive  honor,  disdain 
of  subterfuge  and  abhorrence  of  meanness,  really  unfitted 
him  for  such  contests  with  the  vulgar.  If  he  had  lived  in 
the  early  days  of  the  Republic,  when  virtue  held  just 
sway,  he  would  have  been  among  the  great  lights  and 
leaders  of  the  nation. 

"The  mournful  tribute  to  the  private  virtues  and 
graces  of  Mr.  Williams,"  the  Post  concludes,  "is  universal 
and  unfeigned  among  all  who  knew  him.  Gentle,  genial 
and  tender,  he  infused  happiness  in  every  circle  into 


BUST  OF  MR.  WILLIAMS,  BY  MILLS 

Halftone  of  original  in  possession  of  tin 

Pennsylvania  Historical  Society 


CLOSING    YEARS  739 

which  he  entered.  Amongst  those  who  followed  him  to 
the  grave  were  many,  especially  of  his  own  profession, 
who  will  cherish  his  memory  in  grateful  remembrance  for 
spontaneous  kindness  and  invaluable  aid  in  their  early 
struggles.  If  propriety  would  permit  us  to  raise  the  veil 
and  exhibit  his  domestic  life,  it  would  present  a  touch 
ing  and  beautiful  picture.  But  we  forbear.  The  sanctity 
of  family  sorrow  is  not  to  be  invaded  even  in  the  case  of 
the  most  tender  husband,  affectional  father  and  faithful 
friend. — This  brief  and  imperfect  notice  we  have  felt  to 
be  due  to  the  memory  of  an  eminent  citizen,  whose  death 
is  a  public  loss."1 

Nearly  forty  years  of  public  life  were  ended,  covering 
that  great  period  from  Jackson  to  Grant,  in  which  were 
grown  to  maturity  most  of  the  far-reaching  and  dominant 
policies  of  to-day.  Viewed  now,  through  the  vista  of  over 
thirty  more  years,  in  which  these  principles  have  had 
opportunity  to  develop  and  prove  their  permanence ; 
viewed  in  the  light  of  Pennsylvania's  transformation 
from  a  Democratic  stronghold  into  the  very  keystone  of 
the  tariff  and  Republican  policies  that  arch  America 
to-day ;  viewed  from  the  battlefield  where  corporate 
industrial  and  financial  power  is  being  subordinated  to 
public  law ;  and  viewed  in  the  presence  of  that  sensitive 
popular  jealousy  of  the  delicate  balance  that  must  always 
exist  between  the  great  national  functions  of  lawmak- 
ing  and  the  executive,  as  well  as  that  of  the  high  inter 
preters  between  them — Williams'  lifework  looms  up  with 
all  the  significance  that  attaches  to  what  is  based  upon 
great,  vital  and  permanent  principles.  He  was  a  maker 
of  those  great  constructive  policies  which  are  now  known 
to  history  as  Whig  and  Republican,  and  he  was  a  maker 
with  power  in  a  strategic  place.  He  was  also  one  of  the 
first  and  most  effective  of  the  fighters  on  the  field  where 
even  now  is  raging  the  contest  to  control  corporate  giants 
and  make  them  a  blessing  and  not  a  curse  to  the  land. 
In  this,  as  in  most  other  thought,  he  had  the  instinct  for 
the  eternal ;  he  scented  the  permanent  afar  off ;  his  intui 
tions  reached  beyond  his  times.  He  was  not  infrequently 

1  This  sketch  was  the  one  usually  reprinted  in  most  of  the  eastern  papers. 
The  Daily  Post  was  "The  Only  Democratic  Daily  Paper  in  Western  Pennsyl 
vania." 


74O  THOMAS    WILLIAMS 

in  the  minority  in  order  that  he  might  become  a  prophet 
of  the  great  permanent  majority.  His  thought,  opposed 
for  the  moment  as  radical  and  unwise,  was,  in  due  time, 
placed  in  constitutions.  Therefore,  although  he  was  a 
jurist  and  a  statesman,  he  was,  first  of  all,  the  poet- 
orator,  a  voice  of  those  higher  thoughts  and  inspirations 
of  men,  which  remain  after  the  clouds  and  darkness  have 
cleared  away. 


INDEX 


Index 


Abolition  Movement,  94;   174. 
Acheson,  M.  W.,  735. 
Adams,   Charles   Francis,  297. 
Addresses     and     Speeches     of 
Thomas       Williams        (see 
Speeches    and    Addresses    of 
same). 

Adjutant-General  (see  Thom 
as,  Adj. -Gen.). 

Advocate,  The,  of  Pittsburgh, 
53-4;  becomes  a  daily,  54; 
55;  62;  65;  71;  72;  73-4;  75- 
6;  78;  91;  96;  102. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  733. 

Agnew,  Daniel,  38;  435. 

Allegheny  County,  u;  (see 
Pittsburgh)  ;  commissioners 
of,  authorized  to  subscribe 
for^  stock,  225;  goes  for 
Fremont,  300 ;  301 ;  war  of, 
on  municipal  subscription, 
302-91 ;  commissioners  of, 
report,  302. 

Allegheny  Valley  Railroad 
Company,  303. 

Allison,  John,  296;  nominates 
Lincoln,  298. 

Allison,  Congressman  Wm.  B., 
622;  649. 

Amendments  to  National  Con 
stitution  (see  Constitution, 
The  National). 

American  Party  (see  Know- 
Nothing  Party). 

Anti-Masonic  Party,  46 ;  53 ; 
organ,  531  69;  71;  78;  91; 
93;  95;  96;  99;  107-08;  108- 
20;  129;  142;  297. 

Anti-Slavery,  Convention  of, 
101 ;  party,  294;  (see  Aboli 
tion  Movement)  ;  (see  Re 
publican  Party). 

Archer,  298. 

Armies  of  the  U.  S.  and 
Slavery,  727. 

Arnold,  Isaac  N.,  on  his  Life 
of  Lincoln,  553. 


Articles  of  Impeachment  (see 
Impeachment). 

Articles,  Papers  and  Pam 
phlets  by  Thos.  Williams 
(see  Pamphlets,  Papers  and 
Articles  by  same). 

Avery,  C,  98. 

Bakewell,  Benjamin,  56;  first 
President  of  Historical  So 
ciety,  58;  65;  66. 

Bakewell,  Thomas,  69 ;  81 ;  93. 

Baldwin,  Henry,  37;  38;  sketch 
of,  57;  referred  to  by  Clay, 
178. 

Ball,  Representative,  462. 

Baltimore,  Lord,  I ;  2. 

Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad, 
96;  (see  Transportation); 
103;  origin  of,  127-28;  223. 

Banks  and  Politics  in  Penn 
sylvania,  131 ;  133-35 ;  462. 

Banks,  Nathaniel  P.,  299. 

Barclay,   Senator,   131. 

Barnes,  Rev.  Albert,  296. 

Bell,  A.  S.,  736. 

Bell,  Thomas  S.,  in;  116. 

Biddle,  Nicholas,  59. 

Biddle,   Richard,  37;  38;   58. 

Bigler,   Governor,  225 ;  292. 

Bingham,  Congressman  John 
A.,  619;  chosen  to  the  Board 
of  Managers  of  Impeach 
ment,  673. 

Binney,  Horace,  on  municipal 
subscription,  302. 

Black,  Jeremiah  S.,  227-28; 
228-89;  725. 

Black,  Samuel,  733. 

Blaine,  Congressman  James  G., 
622;  649. 

Bliss,  George,  481. 

"Bonny  Blue  Flag  that  Bears 
a  Single  Star,  The"  a  Con 
federate  song,  noted,  475. 

Boutwell,  George  S.,  480;  619; 
622;  649;  650;  says  Williams 
wrote  all  but  four  pages  of 


743 


744 


INDEX 


summary  of  die  Impeach 
ment  Report,  651 ;  made 
chairman  of  committee  to 
prepare  articles  of  impeach 
ment,  673 ;  chosen  a  manager, 

673. 

Brackenridge,  Alexander,  98. 
Brackenridge,      Judge       Hugh 

Henry,  description  by,  9;  10- 

II. 
Brackenridge,    Judge     H.     M., 

62 ;  65  ;  81 ;  91. 
Brady,  James  T.,  725. 
Breckinridge,      vote      for.      in 

Pennsylvania,  433. 
Brevvster,  Benj.  H.,  225. 
Brown,  A.  M.,  735. 
Brown,  Charles,  in;  114;  122. 
Browning,     Secretary     of     In 
terior,  621. 
Buchanan,  97 ;  remark  of,  294 ; 

referred       to        ("Buck       & 

Breck"),  299;  300;  433;  460. 
''Buckshot  War,"  The,   108-20; 

origin     of     name     of,      114; 

causes  of,  119-20. 
Burke,  Robert,  38;  62;  65. 
Burrowes,     Thomas     H.,     109; 

no;   112;   115;   136. 
Butler,     Congressman     B.     R, 

619;  649;  chosen  a  manager 

of  impeachment,  673. 
Caldwell,  Ann,  39. 
Calhoun,  John  C,  57-8. 
Cameron,   Simon,  469;   479-80; 

becomes     National     Senator, 

622;  726. 

Canals  (see  Transportation). 
Carlisle,  23. 

Cassatt,  Senator,  death  of,  119. 
Chandler,  Senator,  726. 
Charlestown,  Md.,  4. 
Chartiers  Valley  Railroad,  303. 
Chase,    Governor    Salmon    P.. 

297. 

Chesapeake  Bay,  I. 
Chicago,  80. 

Chicago  Convention     (see  Re 
publican    Party). 
Chief  Executive,  The,  power  of, 

in    reconstruction,    652;    (see 

Johnson,   Andrew). 
Churchill,  John  C.,  649. 
Civil  Rights  Bill,  620. 
Civil  War,  The,  435 ;  speech  on 

beginning   of,     436-50;     song 

on,  by  Mr.  Williams,  475-78; 


480;  524;  divided  into  two 
periods,  military  and  civil 
proper,  647;  conclusions  on, 
726-27-28. 

Clay,  Henry,  46;  58;  135;  142; 
retirement  of,  from  the  Sen 
ate,  175;  candidacy  for  Pres 
idency,  175;  invited  to  Pitts 
burgh,  176;  letter  by,  on 
Presidential  candidacy,  177- 
78;  anecdote  of,  177;  chosen 
by  Whig  Convention,  178; 
(see  Tariff  Speech  by  Wil 
liams,  179-219)  ;  219. 

Clay  Clubs,  175. 

Cleveland  and  Pittsburgh  Rail 
road,  303. 

Clymer,  Senator,  468;  472. 

Colfax,  Speaker,  619;  649. 

College  of  New  Jersey  (see 
Princeton  University). 

Collier,  F.   H.,  734. 

Conkling,  Congressman,  619 ; 
726. 

Congress,  Lower  House  of, 
in  1863-64,  described,  480; 
(see  Thirty-eighth  Congress, 
The)  ;  (see  Thirty-ninth 
Congress,  The)  ;  (see  For 
tieth  Congress,  The)  ;  and 
President  Johnson,  650-51. 

Constitution  of  1791,  revision 
of,  91;  94;  108;  115;  Gover 
nor  Porter  on,  120;  and  mu 
nicipal  subscription  to  rail 
ways,  227;  228-89;  amend 
ment  to,  300-01 ;  amendments 
carried,  331 ;  municipal  sub 
scription  amendments  to, 
carried  into  the  Constitution 
of  1873. 

Constitution,  The  National, 
fourteenth  amendment  to, 
620;  with  or  without  slavery, 
727. 

Copley,  Josiah,  letter  of,  489. 

Corporate  Power,  473. 

Coulter,  Richard,  34;  35;  37. 

Court  House  (see  Pittsburgh). 

Cowan,  Edgar,  435  ;  469 ;  620. 

Covode,  Congressman,  489. 

Craig,  Neville  B.,  4;  38;  53; 
54;  55;  60;  62;  66;  watchful 
of  the  Whigs,  69;  71;  95; 
96 ;  99 ;  103  ;  105 ;  296. 

Cumberland  County,  294;  300. 


INDEX 


745 


Cnrtin,  Governor,  inaugura 
tion  of,  436;  463. 

Curtis,  Judge,  725. 

Dallas,  George  M.,  59. 

Dalzell,  John,  extract  of  ad 
dress  of,  433. 

Darlington,  S.  P.,  62. 

Darlington,  Wm.  M.,  736. 

Darragh,  Cornelius,  38;  60;  80; 
103. 

Darsie,  George,  58;  69. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  295 ;  and  God 
dess  of  Liberty,  524. 

Davis,   Judge,  459. 

Dayton,  William  L.,  298;  299. 

De  La  Roche,  Dr.  Percy  (see 
Stokes,  Maj.-Gen.  Wm.  Ax- 
on). 

Delaware,  State  line,  i. 

Dennis,  W.  L.,  469. 

Denny,  Harmar,  38;  53;  56; 
57;  65;  69;  955  98;  137- 

Democratic  Party  (see  Jack 
son  Democrats);  174;  175; 
460. 

Dick,  John,  296. 

Dickinson  College,  22 ;  23 ; 
Williams'  orations  in,  35 ; 
460. 

Donaldson,  Ann,  40. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  392. 

Drum  House,  12. 

Edmunds,  Senator,  726. 

Education,    early    methods    in, 

15- 

Elder,  Dr.  William,  296. 

Eldridge,   Chas.   A.,  649. 

Ellsworth,   Colonel,  459. 

Ewing,    Rev.    Dr.   John,   3. 

Ewing,  John  H.,  HI;  117;  141; 
142;  143. 

Evarts,  Wm.  M.,  724. 

Eearon,  sketch  by,  12. 

Ferry.  Senator,  726. 

Fetterman,  W.  W.,  58;  60;  66. 

Field,  David  Dudley,  725. 

Fillmore,  296;  299;  300;  460. 

Findlay,  Jonathan,    15. 

Finley,  Rev.  Samuel,  2;  3. 

Fisher,  S.  George,  26;  33;  let 
ter  of,  35. 

Floyd,   John   B.,  433. 

Fort  Du  Quesne,  9. 

Fortieth  Congress,  The,  649; 
some  members  of,  649 ;  Ju 
diciary  Committee  of,  649; 
Judiciary  Committee  of,  rec 


ommends  impeachment,  651; 
Judiciary  Committee  testi 
mony  transferred  to  Recon 
struction  Committee,  672 ; 
(see  Impeachment)  ;  close 
of,  731. 

Fort  Pitt   (see  Pittsburgh). 

"Fort  Williams" (see  Williams, 
Richard)  ;  6. 

Forward,   Walter,  38;   62;   98; 

733- 

Foster,  A.  W.,  98. 
Foster,   Henry  D.,  435. 
Fourteenth  Amendment  to  Na 
tional   Constitution,  620;   de 
clared  in  force,  731. 
Fraley,    Frederick,    no;    122. 
Francis,  Tench,  7. 
Freedmen's  Bureau,  The,  620. 
Fremont,  John   C,    296;    297; 

298;  299;  300. 
Frelinghuysen,    Senator    F.    T., 

726. 

Frelinghuysen,  T.,  59. 
Gartield,     Congressman    James 

A.,  622;   649. 
Gazette,  The  Pittsburgh,  8 ;  files 

of,  52;  53;  54;  62;  71;  72; 

73-4 ;  on  canals,  75  ;  78 ;  96 ; 

98;  103;  104;  131. 
Gazette,  The  United  States,  91 ; 

172. 

Gerhard,  Wm.  W.,  26;  175. 
Geyer,  S.  H.,  736. 
Gibbons,  297. 
Gibson,  John  B.,  34;  38. 
Giddings,  295;  296. 
Goddess  of  Liberty  on  dome  of 

National     Capitol,     anecdote 

of,  524. 
Grant,  General  U.   S.,  and  the 

War     Office,     651 ;     restores 

War  Office  to  Stanton,  672; 

73i. 

Gray  Family,  40. 

Greeley,  Horace,  294-95 ;  296 ; 
notable  letter  of,  299. 

Greensburgh,  n;  travel 
through,  12;  schools  of,  14. 

Grier,  Judge  Robert  C.,  opinion 
of,  374;  letter  of,  on  Wil 
liams'  speech  on  restoration, 
522-23. 

Hampton,  John  H.,  735. 

Hampton,  Moses,  734. 

Hanna,  James,  no;  in;  115. 

Harding,  332. 


746 


INDEX 


Harlan,  Senator,  726. 

Harrisburg,  riot  at  (see  "Buck 
shot  War"). 

Harrison,  Gen.  Wm.  Henry, 
91 ;  95 ;  and  the  Presidency 
in  1835,  96;  and  Anti-Ma 
sons,  96;  nomination  of, 
129;  132;  134;  songs  about, 
138;  election,  139;  described, 
141 ;  cabinet  of,  142 ;  letters 
on  illness  and  death  of,  143- 
44;  eulogy  on,  by  Williams, 
145,  Chapter  X. 

Hay,  John,  459;  460. 

Hays,  Wm.,  98. 

Helper,  book  by  (see  "Impend 
ing  Crisis"). 

Hempfjeld   Railroad,   The,  225. 

Historical  Society,  at  Pitts 
burgh,  organized,  58. 

Hopkins,  Wm.  H.,  118;  469. 

House  of  Representatives,  The 
National  (see  Congress, 
Lower  House  of,  480). 

Houston,  Samuel  R.,  26. 

Howe,  Thomas  M.,  736. 

"Hurrah  for  the  Union  Flag," 
national  air  by  Mr.  Williams, 
475-78- 

Impeachment  of  President 
Johnson,  622;  recommended 
by  Judiciary  Committee,  re 
port  written  by  Williams, 
650;  report  signed  by  Bout- 
well,  Thomas,  Williams, 
Lawrence  and  Churchill, 
651 ;  quotation  from  report 
of,  651-52;  importance  of, 
653;  rejected,  653;  speech  on 
preliminary  measure  of,  653- 
72 ;  and  transfer  of  War 
Office,  immediate  cause 
of,  determination  on,  re 
moved  from  the  field  of  the 
courts,  vote  on,  672 ;  com 
mittee  to  prepare  articles  of, 
673;  articles  of,  nature  of, 
673 ;  election  of  managers  of, 
vote  on  same,  673 ;  managers' 
list  determined  in  caucus, 
673 ;  and  how  Bingham  be 
came  chairman,  673 ;  trial  of, 
opens,  673 ;  speech  in  trial  of, 
by  Williams,  674-724;  com 
ments  on  speeches  in,  724-25- 
26 ;  test  vote  on,  726 ;  how  far 
unsuccessful,  votes  favorable 


to,  and  who  they  were,  726; 

conclusions    on,    726-27 ;    not 

to  be  treated  alone,  728. 
"Impending  Crisis,"  by  Helper, 

392. 
Improvements,     Internal      (see 

Pennsylvania). 
Independence  Hall,  459. 
Indian,  The,  727. 
Ingersoll,  Charles  J.,  108. 
Irwin,  Wm.  W.,  98. 
Jackson,   Andrew,  52;   53;   55; 

interview  with,  57;  report  of 

same,    59;    Clay    on,    177-78; 

460. 
"Jackson   Democrats,"   46 ;   91 ; 

93- 

Jacobus,  Rev.  Dr.,  736. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  523-24;  sig 
nal  for  attack  on,  619;  and 
"restoration,"  620;  letter  on, 
620 ;  impeachment  of,  pro 
posed,  622 ;  regards  Tenure- 
of-Office  Bill  as  unconstitu 
tional,  646 ;  647 ;  investiga 
tion  of,  ordered,  649;  Wil 
liams  on,  650-51 ;  asks  resig 
nation  of  Stanton,  suspends 
Stanton,  appoints  Gen.  Grant, 
651 ;  power  of,  as  Chief 
Executive,  652 ;  transfers 
War  Office  to  Adj. -Gen. 
Thomas,  672 ;  speech  by 
Williams  in  trial  of,  674- 
724;  conclusions  on  impeach 
ment  of,  726-27;  and  Lin 
coln's  reconstruction  plans, 
727-28;  731. 

Johnston,  Ex-Gov.  W.  F., 
296;  298;  (see  Know-Noth 
ing  Party)  ;  299. 

Judiciary  Committee,  of  the 
Thirty-eighth  Congress,  480- 
81 ;  (see  also  Thirty-ninth 
and  Fortieth  Congresses). 

Kelley,  Congressman,  619;  620; 
649. 

Kennedy,  John,  37;  sketch  of, 
38;  on  political  studies,  38-9; 

43- 

Kernan,  Francis,  480. 
King,  Austin  A.,  481. 
King,  Josiah,  736. 
Kirkpatrick,    Major    Abraham, 

4;  letter  from,  6-7;  8. 
Kirkpatrick,  John  W.,  734. 
Kirkpatrick,  Mary,  4. 


INDEX 


747 


Know-Nothing  Party,  295;  296; 
297;  299;  (see  Johnston,  Ex- 
Go  v.  W.  F.)  ;  300. 

Knox,  John  C,  227. 

Ktihn,  Dr.  Adam,  40. 

Kuhn,  James  I.,  734. 

Lane,  Col.  Henry  S.,  297. 

Lawrence,  William,  649. 

Lee,   Arthur,   5. 

Legislation,  The,  power  of, 
227;  228-89;  300;  302-91. 

Lewis,  Ellis,  227. 

Library,  State,  (of  Pennsyl 
vania)  140. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  298;  elec 
tion  of,  395 ;  Pennsylvania 
for,  432-33;  452;  at  Harris- 
burg,  458-59;  described,  458; 
address  by,  459;  and  family 
go  by  different  routes  to 
Washington,  459-60;  the  in 
auguration  of,  460;  oath  of 
office  of,  460;  and  first  quad 
rille  party,  460;  home  inci 
dent  of,  460;  472;  second  in 
auguration  of,  523-24;  death 
of,  524;  eulogy  on,  by  Wil 
liams,  524-53;  and  recon 
struction,  652;  and  the  North 
ern  people,  727;  and  his 
change  of  plans,  728. 

Lincoln,  Mrs.  Abraham,  459; 
460. 

Lincoln,   "Bob"     (Robert    T.), 
459;  460.    „       .  . 
Loco  Focos,     origin  of  name 
of,     119;     120;     130-31;  and 
banks,  131 ;  132-33. 

Logan,  Congressman  John  A., 
649. 

Log  College  (see  Princeton 
University). 

Love  joy,  Rev.  Owen,  295;  297. 

Lowrie,  Walter  H.,  38;  227. 

Macbeth,  Alexander,  24;  26.; 
32-3;  35;  36;  death  of,  121. 

MacConnell,  Thomas,  734. 

Maclay,  Samuel,  26. 

Managers  of  Impeachment, 
673;  (see  Impeachment,  etc.). 

Manufactures  (see  Tariff). 

Marks,  General,  62;  71. 

Marshall,   Chief  Justice,  57- 

Marshall,  Samuel  S.,  649. 

Marshall,  Thomas  M.,  735. 

Maxwell,  H.  D.,  296. 

Maryland,  State  line,  I. 


Mason  and  Dixon,  2. 

Mason,  Dr.  John  M.,  24. 

McCandless,  Wilson,  58;  66; 
Judge,  736. 

McClure,  A.  K.,  as  Republican 
State  Chairman,  434;  435; 
457;  458;  468;  keeps  Presi 
dent  Scott  from  investigation 
by  the  Legislature,  471-72; 
and  the  repeal  measure  in  the 
Senate,  473. 

McClure,  W.  B.,  38. 

McLean,  Judge,  of  Ohio,  46; 
296;  297. 

Meade,   General,  553. 

Meek,   Esther,  4. 

Mercury,   The,    of    Pittsburgh, 

65- 

Meredith,  332. 

Morgan,  E.  D.,  296;  299. 

Morrill,  the  Senators,  726. 

Morrison,  John,  736. 

Morton,  Senator,  726. 

Muhlenburg,  91. 

Municipal  Subscription  to 
Railways,  222-23;  history  of, 
224;  225;  address  on,  in  the 
Sharpless  Case,  225-26-27;  re 
view  on,  by  Williams,  229-89; 
300-01 ;  war  on,  in  Allegheny 
County,  302-91 ;  Judge  J.  W. 
F.  White  on,  391. 

Musical  Fund  Hall,  Philadel 
phia,  296. 

National  Hall,  Philadelphia, 
296. 

"National  Republicans,"  46;  of 
Pittsburgh,  56. 

Negro,  The,  in  American  Poli 
tics,  speech  on,  395~43i ;  726- 
27-28. 

Neil,  Dr.  Wm.,  24;  30. 

New  York  Times,  The,  recom 
mends  Williams'  speech  on 
the  impeachment  in  highest 
praise,  725. 

Nicolai,  John  G.}  459- 

Neville,   Colonel  John,  4;   7- 

Northern  People,  The,  and  the 
Reconstruction  Acts,  647 ; 
and  slavery,  727. 

Nottingham  lots,  2;  churches, 
2-4 ;  academy,  2 ;  3. 

O'Conor,    Chas.,   725- 

O'Hara,    James,    736. 

Ohio  Company,   I. 


748 


INDEX 


Oliphant,  General  S.  D.,  a 
partner  of  Mr.  Williams,  734. 

Orations  (see  Speeches). 

Packer,  Governor,  435. 

Palmer,  Judge,  298. 

Pamphlets,  Papers  and  Arti 
cles  of  Thos.  Williams  (see 
Speeches  and  Addresses) ; 
"Review  of  the  Opinion  of 
the  Three  Judges  (Black, 
Woodward  and  Knox)  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Penn 
sylvania,  Affirming  the  Va 
lidity  of  Acts  of  Assembly 
Authorizing  Subscriptions  by 
Municipal  Corporations  to 
the  Stock  of  Railroad  Com 
panies,"  228-89;  article  on 
charge  of  so-called  "repudi 
ation,"  304-05 ;  address  of 
Taxpayers'  Convention  Com 
mittee,  306-31 ;  his  "Review 
of  the  Opinion  of  the  Three 
Judges,"  etc.,  again  issued, 
332;  "Review"  of  manda 
mus  opinion  of  Supreme 
Court,  signed  "Junius," 
332-73;  final  defense  of  his 
course  in  an  article  in  the 
Pittsburgh  Commercial,  375- 
91 ;  article  by,  in  London 
American,  452. 

Papers,  Pamphlets  and  Articles 
by  Thomas  Williams  (see 
Pamphlets,  Papers  and  Ar 
ticles  by  same). 

Parsons,  A.  V.,  122. 

Patterson,  Major-General  R., 
114. 

Pearson,  Senator.  122;  131; 
140. 

Pemberton,  Agnes  (Williams), 
733- 

Pemberton,  Henry,  733. 

Pemberton,  General  John  C, 
733- 

Pemberton,  Dr.   Ralph,  733. 

Penn,  William,  2. 

Pennsylvania,  State  line,  I ; 
travel  through,  12;  studies 
for  citizenship  in,  38;  jour 
ney  through,  41;  (see  Pitts 
burgh)  ;  remarks  on,  by  Web 
ster,  69-70-1 ;  politics  in, 
9i,  93,  945  internal  improve 
ments  in,  94;  public  schools 
in,  94;  abolition  movement 


in,  94;  election  of  1837,  102; 
finances  and  transportation, 
TOO;  103;  politics  in,  107-08; 
election  contest  of  1838,  108- 
20;  129;  130;  banks  and  pol 
itics  in,  131 ;  Harrison  Na 
tional  Convention  in,  132; 
banks,  etc.,  133-35;  improve 
ment  bill  for,  136;  finances 
of,  136 ;  State  Library  of, 
140;  notable  speeches  in  Sen 
ate  of,  140 ;  politics  in,  142-43 ; 
lost  to  Whigs,  174;  and  Clay 
and  Jackson,  177-78;  and 
transportation,  222-24 ;  Sidney 
Smith  on,  223;  politics 
and  causes  of,  223-24;  (see 
Municipal  Subscription  to 
Railways)  ;  politics  of,  294; 
Buchanan  on,  294 ;  296 ;  297 ; 
298,  299;  goes  for  Buchanan 
against  Fremont,  300;  views 
in,  on  transportation,  302; 
division  of,  suggested,  302; 
and  municipal  subscription, 
302-91 ;  speech  on  politics  at 
Pittsburgh,  395-431 ;  for  Lin 
coln,  432-33 ;  Legislature  of, 
and  politics  in,  in  1861,  434; 
debt  of,  435 ;  railway  mort 
gage  bonds  held  by,  435 ;  and 
slavery,  435-36 ;  and  Union, 
436;  450;  and  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Railroad,  454 ;  and 
transportation,  457-58;  Sena- 
torship,  461-62;  soldiers  first 
at  Washington,  462;  credit 
of,  464;  465;  465-68;  investi 
gation  of  corruption  in  leg 
islation  of,  469 ;  great  change 
in  political  character  of  the 
Legislature  of,  470. 

Pennsylvania  Canal  and,  Co 
lumbia  Railroad,  97;  (see 
Transportation). 

Pennsylvania  Railroad  (see 
Transportation,  and  Penn 
sylvania  Canal  and  Columbia 
Railroad);  128;  302;  395; 
434;  435;  4.5i;  4541  455-56- 
57;  and  Lincoln,  459;  465; 
468;  470;  described  by  Wil 
liams,  471 ;  and  the  tonnage 
tax,  473- 

Penny,  Senator,  457. 

Penrose,  Charles  B.,  no;  115; 
122;  131;  132;  134;  135;  136; 


INDEX 


749 


letter  of,  139;  140;  letter  of, 
142;  resigns  and  goes  to 
Washington,  142;  letter  of, on 
illness  of  President  Harri 
son,  143 ;  on  President  Har 
rison  and  a  White  House  Bi 
ble,  144. 

Philadelphia,  authorized  to 
take  stock  in  railroad,  225; 
and  Pittsburgh,  289-90;  298; 
and  transportation,  434;  451; 
and  Mr.  Williams,  473. 

Philadelphia  County,  politics 
in,  108-09;  no;  IJ4;  TI7- 

Philadelphia,  Easton  and  Wa 
ter  Gap  Railroad,  225. 

Pierce,   President,  460. 

Pittsburgh,  origin  and  descrip 
tion,  5,6;  early  letter  about, 
7 ;  Gazette,  8 ;  description  by 
Brackenridge,  9,  10,  n; 
travel  to,  12;  bar  of,  38;  sit 
uation  of,  and  politics  of,  in 
the  '3o's,  45,  47,  18;  first 
court  house  in,  48 ,  49 ;  hu 
morous  description  of,  49-5°" 
T  ;  transportation  interests 
of,  52 ;  campaign  in  1832,  53 ; 
Gazette,  53;  (see  Gazette,  The 
Pittsburgh)',  Advocate,  53; 
(see  Advocate,  The,  of  Pitts 
burgh)  ;  court  house  of,  54; 
(see  Transportation)  ;  Anti- 
Jackson  meeting  in,  55-6; 
Historical  Society  organized, 
58;  Whig  Party  organized  in, 
60;  (see  Whig  Party)  ;  Mer 
cury,  65;  Whig  campaign  in, 
69;  remarks  on,  by  Webster, 
70;  Whig  success  in,  74; 
campaign  of  '35  in,  78;  Whig 
meeting  in,  81 ;  ticket  in,  91 ; 
and  transportation,  97;  pol 
itics  in,  98;  102;  103;  fierce 
campaign  in,  105;  and  rail 
ways,  127-28;  175;  176;  and 
Clay,  177;  and  transporta 
tion,  223-24;  (see  Reviews, 
Pamphlets,  etc..  by  Thos. 
Williams);-  preliminary  or 
ganization  of  the  Republican 
Taxpayers'  Convention  in, 
305 ;  address  of  Taxpayers' 
Convention  Committee,  306- 
31 ;  commissioners  block  tax 
ing  for  disputed  purposes, 
331 ;  test  case  in,  332 ;  addi 


tional  test  cases  in,  374 ;  com 
missioners  at,  in  prison,  375 ; 
Judge  J.  W.  F.  White  on, 
391 ;  speech  of  Williams  at, 
on  "The  Negro,"  395-43 i; 
county  goes  for  Lincoln,  431 ; 
letter  on,  432;  removing  can 
non  from  arsenal  in,  433  ;  and 
"repudiation,"  so  called,  450- 

51- 

Pittsburgh  and  Connellsville 
Railroad,  303. 

Pittsburgh  and  Steubenville 
Railroad.  225;  303. 

Politics,  National,  in  the  '3o's, 
46;  53;  55;  60;  96;  129;  132; 
133  ;  141 ;  142 ;  293 ;  295  ;  300 ; 
391-92-93;  speech  on  negro 
in,  395-431 ;  speech  on  "Main 
tenance  of  the  Constitution 
and  the  Union,"  by  Williams, 
436-50;  458-59;  (see  Lincoln, 
Abraham)  ;  479-80. 

Politics,  Pennsylvania  (see 
Pennsylvania). 

Politics,  Pittsburgh  (see  Pitts 
burgh). 

Polk,    President,   460. 

Porter,  Governor,  inauguration 
described,  120. 

Porter,  Margaret,  39;  family, 
40. 

Pope,  Captain,  459. 

Portraits,  Views  and  Maps  (see 
Table  of  Illustrations,  fol 
lowing  Contents). 

Post,  The  Pittsburgh,  173 ;  nota 
ble  eulogy  of  Williams  in, 

736-39. 

Presbyterian  Settlement,  2;  ed 
ucation,  2. 

Press,  The  Philadelphia,  on 
Williams'  impeach  m  e  n  t 
speech,  724. 

Preston  of  South  Carolina,  58. 

Preston,  Rev.  Dr.,  736. 

Princeton  University,  "Log 
College,"  3- 

Protection  (see  Tariff). 

Public  Debt,  301;  (see  Consti 
tution  of  1791). 

Public  Ledger,  The,  on  "Buck 
shot  War,"  114;  on  Mr.  Wil 
liams  and  repudiation,  450. 

Public  School  System  (see 
Pennsylvania). 


750 


INDEX 


Public  Works  in  Pennsylvania 
(see  Transportation). 

Purviance,   297. 

Railways  (see Transportation)  ; 
(see  Municipal  Subscription 
to)  ;  bond  cases  of,  458. 

Reconstruction,  480;  481-89; 
489-522 ;  letter  on,  by  Justice 
Grier,  522-23;  speech  on,  by 
Williams,  554-617;  622;  act 
for,  becomes  law,  646 ;  oper 
ated  through  the  Secretary 
of  W"ar,  Stanton,  646 ;  na 
ture  and  effects  of,  647 ;  as 
seen  in  Mississippi,  647;  (see 
Impeachment  of  President 
Johnson);  committee  on,  re 
ceived  testimony  of  Judiciary 
Committee,  672 ;  some  con 
clusions  on,  726-27;  and  its 
legacy  of  problems,  728;  and 
the  statesmen  who  attempted 
it,  7^8. 

Republican  National  Conven 
tion  (see  Republican  Party). 

Republican  Party,  National, 
preliminary  organization  of, 
at  Pittsburgh,  294;  first  Na 
tional  Convention  of,  295 ; 
299;  300;  call  for  Chicago 
Convention  of  1860, 391-92-93 ; 
speech  on  principles  of,  395- 
431 ;  letter  on,  by  Gideon 
Welles,  432;  479-80;  621;  and 
the  Civil  War,  726-27-28; 
nominates  Grant  and  de 
clares  for  reconstruction  pol 
icy,  731. 

Resolutions  on  Williams'  death, 
by  bar  of  Pittsburgh,  735. 

"Restoration"  vs.  Reconstruc 
tion,  620. 

Reynolds,  Alexander,  39 ;  40. 

Reynolds,   Henry,  2. 

Reynolds,  Miss  Sarah  D.,  24; 
poem  to,  25 ;  36 ;  sketch  of, 
39;  40;  (see  Williams,  Mrs. 
Thomas,  Jr.). 

Reynolds,    William,   39;    40. 

Reynolds,  Dr.  Wm.,  39;  40. 

Rising  Sun,  2;  3. 

Ritner,  53;  80;  Si ;  94;  95; 
107. 

Rodgers  Family,  40. 

Ross,  James,  37,  38. 

Ro\ve,  John,  468. 

Rush,  Dr.  Benjamin,  3. 


Rush,   Richard,   59. 

Schofield,   Congressman,  619. 

Scotch-Irish    Presbyterians,  2. 

Scott,  Thomas  A.,  434;  457-58; 
471-72. 

Scovel,  Rev.  Dr.  S.  R,  736. 

Senate,  The  National,  622 ;  re 
fuses  to  consent  to  Stanton's 
removal,  653 ;  672 ;  as  Court 
of  Impeachment,  673 ;  vote  on 
impeachment  given,  726;  as 
Court  of  Impeachment  ad 
journed,  726. 

Sergeant,  John,  69. 

Seward,  297. 

Singer,  Agnes  (see  Williams, 
Mrs.  Robert,  Jr.). 

Singer,   Simon,   12. 

Shaler,  Charles,  38;  374. 

Shannon,  Judge,  619. 

Sharpless  Case,  The,  225;  (see 
Williams,  Thos.,  Jr.),  227; 
(see  Municipal  Subscription 
to  Railways)  ;  (see  Supreme 
Court,  The)  ;  (see  Speeches 
and  Addresses  of  Thos.  Wil 
liams). 

Shaw,   Mrs.   Quincy  A.,  733. 

Sherman,  John,  392 ;  on  the 
guilt  of  Andrew  Johnson, 
726. 

Shields,  David,  98. 

Shiras,  George,  Jr.,  735-36. 

Shultz,  Governor  John  An 
drew,  24. 

Slave  Labor,  219;  (see  Slavery 
and  Anti-Slavery). 

Slavery  (see  Anti-Slavery, 
Slave  Labor,  and  Abolition 
ism)  ;  295  ;  435  ;  and  the  Con 
stitution,  726-27-28. 

Smith,  B.  M.,  734. 

Smith,  Sidney,  remark  of,  on 
Pennsylvania  credit,  223. 

Soderini,  Count  D.  Eduardo 
(see  Stokes,  Maj.-Gen.  Wm. 
Axon). 

South  Carolina,  Convention  of, 
435  5  436. 

Southern  States,  The,  forced- 
labor  features  in  new  govern 
ments  of,  620;  citizenship 
qualifications  in,  620;  (see 
Southern  WThite  People)  ; 
and  reconstruction,  647. 

Southern  White  People,  The, 
and  the  Reconstruction  Act, 


INDEX 


751 


646-47 ;  and  forced-labor 
laws,  727;  728. 

Spaulding,   Judge,   298. 

Speeches  and  Addresses  (see 
Williams,  Thomas,  Jr.)  ; 
Whig  address  of  July  4, 
1835,  81-90;  "Buckshot  War" 
investigation,  122-26 ;  eulo 
gy  on  President  Harrison, 
145,  Chapter  X ;  the  press  on 
his  eulogy,  172-73;  on  tariff, 
179-219;  legal  address  of, 
in  the  Sharpless  Case,  intro 
duction  of,  225-26-27;  (see 
Pamphlets,  Papers  and  Ar 
ticles  by  Thos.  Williams)  ; 
speech  on  "The  Negro  in 
American  Politics"  in  1860, 
395-431;  on  "Maintenance  of 
the  Constitution  and  the 
Union,"  436-50 ;  closing 
speech  of  the  session  of  Leg 
islature,  by  request,  465-68; 
extract  from  debate  on  rail 
way  legislation,  470;  House 
farewell  address  by  Williams, 
requested,  474-75;  on  the 
state  of  the  Union,  481-89; 
on  restoration  of  the  Union, 
489-522;  eulogy  on  Lincoln, 
524-53 ;  on  "reconstruction," 
5=14-617;  on  Tenure-of-Office 
Bill,  622-46;  on  bill  provid 
ing  for  full  bench  and 
unanimous  opinion  of  Su 
preme  Court  on  Congression 
al  measures,  653-72 ;  speeches 
in  impeachment  trial,  674- 
724- 

Sprague.  Peleg,  sketch  of,  58. 

Stanberry,   Henry,  725. 

Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  304;  374; 
472;  479;  letter  of,  to  Wil 
liams,  on  Governor  Curtin's 
course,  479-80;  and  the  Ten- 
ure-of-Office  Bill,  620;  the 
organ  of  operation  of  recon 
struction  by  Congress,  6^6 ; 
resignation  of,  asked  for  by 
the  President,  refusal,  and 
suspension,  651 ;  removal  of, 
not  consented  to,  by  Senate, 
653;  673;  733. 

State  Banks,  59. 

St.   Clair,   General,  7. 

Sterrett,  James  P.,  734. 


Stevens,  Thaddeus,  80;  81 ;  95; 
96;  112;  115;  119;  131;  132; 
136 ;  138 ;  142 ;  297 ;  435 ;  479 ; 
619 ;  621 ;  622  ;  649 ;  chairman 
of  Reconstruction  Committee, 
672 ;  recommends  special 
committee  to  prepare  articles 
of  impeachment,  673;  chosen 
a  manager  of  impeachment, 
vote  reverses  order  of  nomi 
nation  of,  673. 

Stokes,  Maj.-Gen.  Wm.  Axon, 
and  family,  13 ;  732. 

Suffrage,  and  the  Negro,  727; 
and  women,  727. 

Sumner,   Senator  Charles,   726. 

Sumner,  General,  459. 

Sunbury  and  Erie  Railroad, 
434;  435;  45i;  452. 

Supreme  Court,  The  National, 
changes  in,  proposed  by  Wil 
liams,  653-72. 

Supreme  Court,  The,  of  Penn 
sylvania,  227 ;  and  mandamus 
on  Allegheny  County  Com 
missioners,  332 ;  458. 

Taney,  Roger  B.,  64;  Chief 
Justice,  and  Lincoln,  460. 

Tariff,  46;  101 ;  174;  175;  176; 
Clay  on  the,  177;  178;  speech 
on,  179-219;  219. 

Taxes,  levy  for  disputed  pur 
poses  resisted,  331. 

Taylor,    President,   460. 

Tenure-of-Office  Bill,  622 ; 
speech  on,  622-46;  passed, 
646;  and  impeachment,  650; 
672. 

Texan  Revolution,  98. 

Tennessee,    620. 

Thirty-eighth  Congress,  The, 
described,  480 ;  Judiciary 
Committee  in,  480-81 ;  and 
emancipation,  524. 

Thirty-ninth  Congress,  The, 
524 ;  554 ;  notable  scene  in, 
619;  620;  second  session, 
members  described,  622 ; 
closes,  648. 

Thomas,  Adj. -Gen.,  and  the 
War  Office,  672;  673. 

Thomas,  Francis,  480;  649. 

Thomas,  Joseph  T.,  bond  case 
of,  332. 

Times,  The  New  York  (see 
New  York  Times,  The}. 

Times,  The  Pittsburgh,  78. 


752 


INDEX 


Tonnage  Tax,  The,  435;  454- 
55-56-57 ;  commutation  of, 
passed,  457;  464-65;  public 
outcry  against  its  commuta 
tion,  468;  469;  vote  on  repeal 
of  commutation  measure  in 
House  on,  470;  the  repeal 
measure  in  the  Senate  and 
how  it  fails,  472. 

Transportation,  52 ;  55  ;  61 ;  75 ; 
79;  80;  93;  96;  97;  99;  ioo ; 
103;  127-28;  222-25;  laws  au 
thorizing  municipal  aid  of, 
224-25;  and  the  Sharpless 
Case,  225-26-27 ;  229-89 ; 
views  of,  in  Pennsylvania, 
301-02;  and  municipal  sub 
scription,  302-91;  434;  451- 
S2;  in  the  Legislature,  454; 

465- 

True  Press,  The  Weekly,  306. 

"Tusculum,"  732. 

Tyler,  President,  174;  175;  460. 

United  States  Bank,  46;  53; 
55;  Jackson  on,  59;  107;  of 
Pennsylvania,  131. 

Van  Buren,  58 ;  91 ;  460. 

Veech,  Judge,  736. 

Veree,  James  P.,  296. 

Virginia  Convention  of,  452. 

Wabash  Railroad,  128. 

Wade,  Senator  Benj.  F.,  -as  a 
successor  to  President  John 
son,  650. 

Wagner,  William,  no;  in; 
116;  118. 

"WTar  Democrats,"  434. 

War  Office,  transferred,  672. 

War,  Secretary  of  (see  Stan- 
ton,  Edwin  M.). 

Washington  County,  458. 

Washington,  D.  C,  descrip 
tion  of,  56. 

Washington,  George,  i. 

Watts,  H.  M.,  80. 

Webb,  General,  297. 

Webster,  58;  address  on  Penn 
sylvania  by,  69-70-1 ;  81 ;  91 ; 
93;  letter  of,  on  Presidency, 
94-5;  101;  174. 

Welles,  Governor  Gideon,  let 
ter  of,  432. 

Welsh,  tract,  2;  Presbyterians, 
2. 

West,  The,  in  1827-32,  47;  95; 
treated  in  Harrison  eulogy, 
145,  Chapter  X. 


West  College  (see  Dickinson 
College). 

Whig  Party,  The,  53 ;  organ 
ized  in  Pittsburgh,  60;  jubi 
lee  in  Pittsburgh,  62; 
ticket  in  Pittsburgh,  65  ;  State 
Convention  announced,  66 ; 
City  Convention  announced, 
66 ;  nucleus  of,  in  Western 
Pennsylvania,  67 ;  address  of, 
at  Pittsburgh,  67-8;  State  Con 
vention  of,  69;  71;  leaders 
in  Pittsburgh,  72;  campaign, 
74-5;  State  Convention,  80; 
meeting  at  Pittsburgh,  Si ; 
ticket  in  Pittsburgh.  91 ;  93 ; 
convention  of,  95-6 ;  98 ;  99 ; 
reorganization,  101 ;  reconcil 
iation  in  Pittsburgh,  103; 
107-08;  (see  "Buckshot 
War");  108-20;  in  Legisla 
ture,  129;  133-36;  success  of, 
139;  and  Tyler,  174;  (see 
Tariff  Speech  by  Williams, 
179-219)  ;  220. 

W7hite,  Judge  J.  W.  F.,  on 
municipal  subscription  and 
"repudiation,"  391. 

Whitefield,  the  preacher,  2;  4. 

Whitehill,  George  S.,  30. 

White  House,  The,  56;  Bible 
for,  by  President  Harrison, 
144. 

Wilkins,  William,  38;  sketch 
of,  57;  58;  98;  733- 

Williams,  Agnes  (see  Pember- 
ton,  Agnes  (Williams)). 

Williams,  Alexander  Reynolds, 
733- 

Williams,  Catherine,  4. 

Williams,   Esther,  4. 

Williams,  Miss  Margaret  Don 
aldson,  describes  trip  to 
Washington,  460 ;  733- 

Williams,  Mary  C,  733. 

Williams,  Nancy  J.  (see 
Stokes,  Ma j. -Gen.  Wm.  Ax- 
on). 

Williams,  Richard  1st,  3-7; 
Richard  2d,  4. 

Williams,  Captain  Richard  Al 
gernon,  733. 

Williams,  Robert,  Jr.,  4:  IT; 
marriage,  11-2;  home.  12; 
family  of,  13;  18;  death  of, 
36. 


INDEX 


753 


Williams,  Mrs.  Robert,  Jr.,  12; 
character  and  death  of,  42. 

Williams,  Robert,  Sr.,  3 ;  4 ;  s  : 
6;  7;  8;  n. 

Williams,  Sarah  D.,  733. 

Williams,  Thomas,  birth  of, 
13;  early  education  of,  14; 
15;  sketch  by,  16,  17;  early 
reading,  18;  poem  by,  19,  20; 
at  Dickinson  College,  22; 
letters  of,  23;  scholarship 
standing  of,  24;  meets  future 
wife,  24;  poem  by,  25;  presi 
dent  of  college  society,  26; 
address  by,  26;  essay  by,  27; 
oration  by,  28 ;  essay  by,  28 ; 
critique  by,  29 :  oration  by, 
29;  in  a  "college  rebellion," 
30;  receives  third  honors,  30; 
oration  by,  31 ;  poem  by,  31- 
2 ;  description  of,  by  Mac 
beth,  32-3;  studies  law  under 
Coulter,  35;  popularity  of 
orations  of,  at  college,  35; 
courtship  of,  35;  visits  Mary 
land,  36;  love  for  Milton, 
36;  death  of  father  of,  36; 
studies  law  under  Kennedy, 
37 ;  admission  of,  to  bar,  38 ; 
ideas  of  preceptor  of,  38;  en 
gagement  of,  39 ;  residence  at 
both  Greensburgh  and  Pitts 
burgh,  letters  of,  40-1 ;  con 
siders  settling  in  Pittsburgh, 
41-2;  first  cases  of,  42-3; 
private  reading  of,  43 ; 
studies  French,  43;  marriage 
of,  43-4;  miniature  portrait 
of,  44  ;  enters  politics,  45-6-7 ; 
law  office  of,  48;  political 
principles  of  (foot-note), 
52 ;  looks  for  home,  53 ;  se 
cretly  becomes  editorial  writ 
er  for  The  Advocate,  53-4; 
settlement,  54;  (see  Advo 
cate,  The}  ;  first  appearance 
of  name  in  press  in  Anti- 
Jackson  meeting,  56;  a  dele 
gate  of  protest  to  Washing 
ton,  56;  describes  Washing 
ton,  56-7;  (organizes  Nation 
al  Republican  Association, 
foot-note,  56)  ;  describes 
statesmen,  57-8 ;  an  organ 
izer  of  Historical  Society  of 
Pittsburgh,  58;  at  Philadel 
phia,  59;  writes  report  of 


delegation  and  recommends 
Anti-Jackson  organization, 
60;  chief  organizer  of  Whigs, 
60-1 ;  writes  and  offers  Whig 
resolutions,  with  first  public 
address,  62;  writes  account 
of  Whig  jubilee  to  his  wife, 
65-6;  writes  address  of 
Whigs,  67-8;  attends  State 
Convention,  69 ;  goes  to 
Washington,  69-70-1 ;  also 
edits  The  Whig,  71 ;  editorial 
pleasantries,  71-2;  recog 
nized  Whig  leader  72; 
charged  with  leading  the 
break  with  Anti-Masons,  72 ; 
publicly  acknowledges  editor 
ship  of  Advocate,  73 ;  success 
of  his  campaign,  74;  chosen 
committeeman  on  canal  agi 
tation,  75;  character  of,  77;  at 
titude  of,  in  campaign  of  1835, 
and  canal  transnortation,  79; 
proposes  Whig  State  Con 
vention,  80;  first  notable  ora 
tion  of,  81-90;  popularity  of 
the  speech  of,  90-1 ;  leader  of 
independent  Whigs,  91 ;  pre 
serves  Whig  organization, 
91-2;  writes  Daniel  Webster, 
93;  and  transportation,  94; 
receives  letter  from  Webster, 
94-5 ;  favors  Harrison,  96 ; 
and  transportation,  at  Balti 
more  Canal  Convention,  97 ; 
and  municipal  railway  bonds, 
97 ;  mentioned  for  Constitu 
tional  Convention,  98 ;  and 
Whig  defection,  98;  and 
Whig  gains,  99;  and  the 
Anti-Masons,  99;  at  Harris- 
burg,  100-01 ;  reorganizes 
Whigs,  101-02;  elected  to 
Select  Council,  102 ;  nomi 
nated  for  State  Senator,  103 ; 
and  the  Senatorial  campaign, 
104-05;  election  as  Senator, 
105;  and  "Buckshot  War," 
112;  letter  of,  112-13;  letter 
of,  114-15  ;  member  of  Commit 
tee  on  Accounts,  Judiciary, 
and  Estates  and  Escheats, 
115;  letter  of,  116-17;  votes 
on  Whig  House  recogni 
tion,  118;  letter  of,  118;  first 
speech  of.  in  the  Senate, 
noted,  118;  opinion  of,  on 


754 


INDEX 


''war,"  119;  describes  Por 
ter's  inauguration,  120 ;  first 
"regular"  speech  of,  in  the 
Senate,  noted,  121 ;  becomes 
one  of  committee  of  investi 
gation,  121 ;  speech  by,  122- 
26 ;  press  eulogy  of,  128 ;  re 
election  and  membership  of 
Committee  on  Corporations, 
in  Whig  minority,  129;  let 
ters  of,  129-30-31 ;  feared  by 
"Loco  Focos,"  131 ;  anecdote 
of,  131-32;  letter  on  Harri 
son  Convention,  132;  letter 
of,  133-34;  letters  on  cam 
paign,  134-36;  and  finance  of 
the  State,  136;  speech  on 
Governor's  course,  noted, 
137 ;  and  Congressional  _  as 
pirations,  137;  and  Harrison 
songs,  138;  letter  of,  138-39; 
goes  to  Washington,  prepares 
Legislative  address  to  peo 
ple,  138;  Whig  leader,  139; 
describes  journey  to  Har- 
risburg  in  winter,  139-40; 
chairman  of  Judiciary  Com 
mittee,  140;  speaker  pro  tern- 
pore,  140;  speeches  of,  at 
tract  attention,  140;  letter  on 
President  Harrison  and  cabi 
net,  141-42;  letter  on  Penn 
sylvania  politics,  142 ;  chosen 
to  deliver  eulogy  on  Harri 
son  before  Legislature,  143 ; 
eulogy  on  President  Harri 
son  by,  145,  Chapter  X ;  re 
tires  from  the  Senate,  174; 
"occasional  addresses"  by, 
174;  development  of  heart 
trouble,  175 ;  invites  Clay  to 
Pittsburgh,  176;  receives  pri 
vate  letter  from  Clay,  177-78; 
called  on  for  keynote  tariff 
speech  by  Clay  Clubs,  178; 
speech  by,  on  tariff,  180-219; 
tariff  leadership  of,  219; 
abandons  politics,  and  rea 
sons  for,  220;  and  private 
practice,  and  relation  to  pub 
lic  life,  220-21-22;  ,and  muni 
cipal  subscription  to  rail 
ways,  222-24;  admission  to 
bar  of  National  Supreme 
Court  noted,  222;  and  Penn 
sylvania  politics,  223-24 ; 
speech  of,  in  the  Sharpless 


Case,  extract  of,  225-26-27; 
review  of  decision  in  Sharp- 
less  Case,  228-89;  review 
makes  Williams  leader 
against  municipal  s  u  b- 
scription  validity,  289 ;  urged 
for  National  Senate,  290-91 ; 
C.  R.  Buckalew  on,  292; 
return  of,  to  politics,  293 ; 
why  he  was  not  in  the  pre 
liminary  Republican  Con 
vention  at  Pittsburgh,  first 
case  in  National  Supreme 
Court,  294;  chosen  first  Re 
publican  National  Commit- 
teeman  for  Pennsylvania, 
295-96-97;  State  delegate-at- 
large,  296;  makes  speech  in 
National  Convention,  298 ; 
writes  Greeley  and  receives 
notable  letter,  299;  on  failure 
of  campaign  of  '56,  300; 
makes  war  on  municipal  sub 
scription,  as  leader,  301 ;  and 
"repudiation,"  so  called,  304 ; 
defense  of  course,  as  "A  Tax 
payer,"  304-05 ;  leads  fight  in 
"Taxpayers'  Convention," 
305;  becomes  chairman  of 
committee  and  founds  The 
Weekly  True  Press  as  an  or 
gan,  306;  writes  address 
of  Taxpayers'  Convention 
Committee,  307-31 ;  and  his 
party  elects  new  commission 
ers  and  resists  tax  levy,  as 
counsel  for  them,  331 ;  his 
"Review  of  the  Opinion  of 
the  Three  Judges,"  etc.,  re 
issued,  332 ;  writes  "Review," 
signed  "Junius,"  on  man 
damus  opinion  of  Su 
preme  Court,  332-73;  chal 
lenge  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
373 ;  brings  additional  test 
cases  before  Judge  Grier, 
and  wins  that  Judge's  person 
al  judgment,  although  bound 
by  precedent,  374;  advises 
commissioners  to  go  to  pris 
on  and  secures  compromise, 
375;  final  defense  of  his 
course,  375-91 ;  leads  great 
Legislative  movement,  391  ; 
writes  the  call  to  the  Repub 
lican  National  Convention  of 
1860,  391-92-93;  letter  by, 


INDEX 


755 


392 ;  becomes  candidate  for 
the  Legislature  on  two  issues, 
no  repeal  of  tonnage  tax  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
and  Union,  395;  speech  by, 
on  "The  Negro  in  American 
Politics,"  395-431;  letter  to, 
by  Gov.  Welles,  on  election, 
432 ;  Dalzell's  address  and 
reference  to,  433;  elected  to 
the  Lower  House  at  Harris- 
burg,  434;  a  candidate  for 
U.  S.  Senate,  offers  a  Union 
resolution,  435;  and  parlia 
mentary  law,  436 ;  on  Gen 
eral  Judiciary  Committee, 
436 ;  great  speech  of,  on 
maintenance  of  the  Consti 
tution  and  the  Union,  436-50; 
.aim  of  speech  of,  450;  and 
Philadelphia  and  "repudia 
tion,"  Ledger  editorial  on, 
450-51-52;  votes  against  Vir 
ginia  Convention,  452 ;  article 
by,  in  London  American,  452; 
and  Lincoln,  452 ;  The  Phila 
delphia  Bulletin  on,  descrip 
tion  of,  453 ;  The  U.  S.  Ga 
zette  on,  453 ;  and  Gov.  Cur- 
tin,  453-54;  on  the  tonnage 
tax,  454 ;  warning  to  Legisla 
ture  by,  454;  extracts  from 
remarks  on  tonnage  tax  by, 
755-56-57;  The  U.  S.  Gazette 
on,  457 ;  and  the  Supreme 
Court  again,  458;  on  a  com 
mittee  to  meet  President 
elect  Lincoln,  458 ;  and  two 
daughters  accompany  the 
President's  family  to  Wash 
ington,  459-60;  guests  of  the 
President  at  the  inaugura 
tion,  460;  and  daughters  are 
in  the  President's  set  in 
opening  quadrille,  and  amus 
ing  incident  happens,  460 ; 
friendship  of  Lincoln  starts 
rumors  regarding  notable 
appointments  for,  461 ;  de 
sired  for  National  Senate  by 
many,  461-62;  withdraws  in 
favor  of  Wilmot  for  the  Sen 
ate,  462 ;  member  of  Com 
mittee  on  Troops  and  Prepa 
rations  for  War,  462;  and 
the  press  463;  and  Governor 
Curtin,  463 ;  expresses 


the  source  of  his  po 
litical  knowledge,  463-64; 
and  State  finances,  465 ;  ad 
vice  of  wife  of,  465 ;  makes 
closing  speech  of  session  by 
request,  465-68;  returned  to 
the  Legislature,  468;  made 
second  on  Judiciary  General 
Committee  and  chairman  of 
those  on  Federal  Relations 
and  State  Library,  469 ; 
called  to  Washington  as  one 
of  Stanton's  most  intimate 
advisers,  and  asked  to  draft 
judiciary  law  for  conquered 
territory  and  maritime  prizes, 
as  well  as  Federal  relations 
to  negroes,  urged  for  Na 
tional  Supreme  bench  by 
Senators,  469 ;  makes  keen 
retort  to  Philadelphia  repre 
sentative,  469 ;  aim  of  attack 
on  Pennsylvania  Railway 
legislation,  470;  always  de 
clined  criminal  practice,  470; 
describes  Pennsylvania  Rail 
road,  471 ;  and  efforts  at  in 
vestigation  of  President 
Scott,  471-72;  letter  of,  472; 
on  the  Senate's  amendment, 
473 ;  and  Philadelphia,  473 ; 
and  modern  corporate  power, 
473 ;  point  of  view  of  and 
character  of  debate  of,  474; 
popular  names  or  titles  given 
him,  and  affection  for,  474; 
requested  by  House  to  make 
its  farewell  address,  474-75 ; 
writes  a  national  air,  "Hur 
rah  for  the  Union  Flag !", 
475-78 ;  elected  to  Congress, 
479 ;  describes  excited  cau 
cus  on  House  organization, 
479;  desired  for  judge  in 
conquered  territory,  480;  de 
scribed  by  his  colleague,  M. 
Russell  Thayer,  as  "not  a 
radical,"  480;  assignment  to 
Committee  on  Judiciary,  480- 
81 ;  speech  by,  on  the  state 
of  the  Union,  481-89;  pre 
cipitates  readmission  prob 
lem,  489;  speech  by,  on  res 
toration  of  the  Union,  489- 
522;  receives  letter  of  Justice 
Robert  C.  Grier,  on  his 
speech,  522-23;  comments  on 


756 


INDEX 


speech  by  Cameron  and  Sum- 
ner,  523 ;  bust  of,  made  by 
Clarke  Mills,  523;  and  Ju 
diciary  Committee,  524;  eu 
logy  by,  on  Lincoln,  524-53: 
eulogy  published  in  Pitts 
burgh  and  London,  553 ;  eu 
logy  praised  by  Arnold,  Lin 
coln's  biographer,  553;  re 
turned  to  the  Thirty-ninth 
Congress,  and  similar  com 
mittees,  554;  active  in  new 
Congress  from  the  first,  and 
delivers  brilliant  speech  on 
reconstruction,  554-617;  press 
accounts  of  the  speech  by, 
and  exciting  scenes  over,  617- 
19;  speech  of,  considered  the 
signal  for  assault  on  the 
President,  said  Montgomery 
Blair,  619-20;  a  dominant 
factor  in  the  Judiciary  Com 
mittee,  he  reports  a  Tenure-of- 
Office  Bill,  620;  letter  by,  on 
President  Johnson,  620; 
urged  as  successor  to  Sena- 
ton  Cowan,  621 ;  course  of, 
described,  621 ;  on  Secretary 
Browning,  621 ;  compared  to 
Webster  and  Clay,  621-22; 
colleagues  of,  in  Thirty- 
ninth  Congress,  622;  calls  up 
his  Tenure-of-Office  Bill, 
622 ;  believes  impeachment 
unnecessary,  because  of  bill, 
622 ;  speaks  on  Tenure-of- 
Office  Bill,  622-46;  views  of, 
on  the  reconstruction  period, 
6^7-48;  colleagues  of,  in  the 
Fortieth  Congress,  649;  lo 
cation  of  seat  of,  649;  mem 
ber  of  Judiciary  Committee, 
649 ;  declines  to  dine  with 
President  Johnson,  649; 
speaks  for  minority  of  Judi 
ciary  Committee  in  advocacy 
of  impeachment,  and  cause  of 
change,  650;  introduces  a  bill 
to  require  full  bench  of  the 
Supreme  Court  and  unani 
mous  opinion  on  Congression 
al  measures,  650;  explains  his 
relations  to  impeachment, 
650-51  ;  refers  to  Senator  B. 
F.  Wade's  position  as  suc 
cessor  to  President  John 
son,  650;  writes  report  of 


Judiciary  Committee  recom 
mending  impeachment,  651 ; 
introduces  and  speaks  on  his 
Supreme  Court  Bill,  653-72; 
referred  to  as  "the  gentle 
man  who  first  brought  this 
question  before  the  country," 
653 ;  Supreme  Court  Bill  con 
sidered  by,  rejected,  672; 
chosen  a  manager  of  im 
peachment,  673;  speech  in 
impeachment  trial  described, 
and  compared  with  others, 
673-74;  the  speech  itself, 
674-724;  congratulations  by 
Evarts,  724;  comments  on 
by  The  Philadelphia  Press, 
724;  by  The  Pittsburgh  Daily 
Commercial,  725 ;  by  The  Cin 
cinnati  Gazette,  725 ;  consid 
ered  best  legal  scholar  on  the 
Board,  725 ;  high  praise  of 
impeachment  speech  of,  by 
New  York  Times,  725;  Dal- 
zell  on  same,  726;  and  the 
impeachment,  728 ;  voiced 
American  contemporay  opin 
ion,  728;  and  permanent  prin 
ciples,  729;  after  leave  of 
absence,  returns  and  presents 
additional  articles  of  im 
peachment,  nature  of  articles, 
729;  refers  to  Wade's  rela 
tions  to  the  impeachment, 
730;  granted  indefinite  leave 
of  absence  on  account  of  con 
tinued  ill-health,  731 ;  and 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment, 
731 ;  retires  from  official  life, 
731 ;  mentioned  for  a  foreign 
mission,  731 ;  in  retirement, 
732 ;  last  appearance  before 
the  bar,  732 ;  his  home  in  Al 
legheny  City  and  his  pro 
posed  homes,  "Tusculum,'' 
et  al,  732;  death  of,  732-33; 
eulogy  on,  by  The  Chronicle, 
733;  compared  with  For 
ward,  Black,  Stanton,  Wil- 
kins,  et  al,  733;  The  Gazette 
on  the  death  of,  "Websterian" 
as  an  orator,  733;  The  Dis 
patch  on  death  of,  733-34; 
library  of,  734;  a  partner  of, 
734 ;  family  of,  733 ;  memo 
rial  meeting  by  the  bar  of 
Pittsburgh  on,  *734 ;  a  Latin, 


INDEX 


757 


Greek  and  French  linguist, 
character  of,  734-35 ;  "Reso 
lutions"  on,  and  committee, 
735-36;  funeral  of,  736;  most 
notable  eulogy  on,  in  The 
Post,  736-39;  last  of  ''thor 
oughbred,  old-fashioned  law 
yers,"  736 ;  "equal  of  the 
brightest  and  best,"  737 ; 
ability,  737;  a  great  tariff  in 
fluence,  737 ;  author  of  the 
Tenure-of-Office  Bill,  737; 
responsible  for  municipal 
subscription  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  of  Penn 
sylvania,  737 ;  a  power  for 
the  Union,  737-38 ;  Evarts 
describes  his  speech  as  the 
ablest  argument  of  the 
ablest  lawyer  against  him, 
738 ;  conservative,  a  scholar, 
student  of  German,  able  pen, 
purity  of,  able  orator,  sense 
of  honor,  beautiful  private 
life,  738-39;  conclusion,  739- 
40. 

Williams,   Major   Thomas,   Jr., 
733- 


Williams,  Mrs.  Thomas  (see 
Reynolds,  Miss  Sarah  D.)  ; 
character  of,  465;  death  of, 

733- 
Williams.  Thomas,   Sr.,  4;  36; 

letter  of,  37. 
Williams,     Miss     Virginia     S., 

733- 

Wilmarth,  298. 
Wilmot,      David,      296 ;      297 ; 

298;    299;     435;     elected     to 

Senate,  462  ;  469  ;  472. 
Wilson,  Henry  D.,  297. 
Wilson,  James   F.,     480 ;     622 ; 

649 ;    chairman    of    Judiciary 

Committee,   650 ;    absence   of, 

651  ;  chosen     a     manager     of 

impeachment,   673. 
Wolf,  80;  91. 
Woodbridge,    Fred'k     E..    481  ; 

649. 
Wood    vs.    Allegheny    County, 

case  of,  374. 
Woods,   Robert,  734. 
Woodward,    George    W.,    227 ; 

332. 
Wyoming  Canal  Co.,  435. 


14  DAY  USE 

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226109  ' 


